Natural England halts Chilterns National Landscape (AONB) extension

We have written to the Secretary of State expressing our profound disappointment at the cancellation of the Chilterns National Landscape Boundary Review project, urging the Government to reconsider this decision.

Download our letter to the Secretary of State

Natural England has written to stakeholders – including CPRE Hertfordshire – with the news that the project to extend the Chilterns National Landscape (formerly known as the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty or AONB) has been halted.

We are deeply dismayed by this news. The National Landscape designation offers strong protection from inappropriate development, and is thus one of the best tools we have for protecting the countryside. While the existing boundary of the Chilterns National Landscape will remain in place, Natural England’s announcement means that additional nearby beautiful, high-quality landscapes will not be designated.

It is difficult not to be cynical, as these additional landscape areas are in the Green Belt. And with the revised National Planning Policy Framework in December 2024, the Government has made it easier for speculative and inappropriate development to go forward on Green Belt sites.

Background

‘National Landscape’ is the formal designation for an area of land that is of national importance for its natural beauty.

The Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty or AONB designation, as it was then known, was established in legislation in 1949 in response to increasing pressure for development. More recent legislation has strengthened the protection of AONBs. For example, the Countryside and Rights of Way Act of 2000 (the CROW Act) requires protection of the land in each AONB in order to conserve and enhance its natural beauty. This requirement remains in place today in legislation and in national planning policy and guidance.

So the National Landscape designation is crucially important in upholding protections from inappropriate or unwarranted development or change of use, as well as conserving and enhancing these nationally important landscapes.

The Chilterns National Landscape

The Chilterns National Landscape (then AONB) was first designated in 1965. It was extended in 1990 in recognition of its fine landscapes and unique geological, ecological and heritage features.

The Chilterns National Landscape currently covers 324 square miles of countryside across four counties: Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. Within Hertfordshire, it covers portions of Three Rivers District, Dacorum Borough and North Hertfordshire District.

You can see the area of the Chilterns National Landscape on our digital map.

The Chilterns boundary review project

The project to review the boundary and extend the Chilterns National Landscape has been pending for 14 years. Natural England has been gathering proposals and evidence on the possibility of extending the boundary of the Chilterns National Landscape since 2011. In 2021, a formal project was launched to consider specific land areas for potential inclusion in the National Landscape. Consultants were then engaged by Natural England to conduct detailed technical assessments.

In late 2023 we attended a stakeholder briefing in which a number of high quality Hertfordshire landscapes that are currently outside the Chilterns National Landscape were discussed for possible inclusion. The project was on track for formal statutory and public consultation with a view to submitting the Designation Order to the Secretary of State by the end of 2024.

So what’s happened now?

Natural England’s announcement says

“Defra and Natural England are having to work to very tight budget settlements. Our work has been considered by Ministers, the department and ourselves and consequently we have had to make some very difficult funding decisions across our programmes. The funding for landscape designations work is, as a result, limited and we have had to make hard choices around which landscape designations projects to continue and which to stop.”

And the Chilterns National Landscape extension is one of the projects that Natural England has decided to stop.

For further background, see our previous posts: Chilterns AONB Boundary Review gets underway, March 2023, and A new future for the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, June 2021.

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