AONB Statutory Management Plan

All the AONB's in England and Wales are required to prepare and publish an AONB Management Plan, under the Countryside and Rights Of Way Act 2000 (CRoW Act).

The Plan sets the context for how all public bodies with responsibilities for and those active within AONBs, should work to ensure the conservation and enhancement of the natural beauty of the area concerned.

The Arnside and Silverdale AONB Partnership published the first AONB Management Plan in April 2004 and has now published an updated edition of this statutory document which will direct the work of conserving and enhancing the natural beauty of the AONB through to 2014. This marks the culmination of a review process that commenced in July 2007.

Clicking this link opens a download of the 2009 Arnside and Silverdale AONB Management Plan (Caution! This is a very large pdf format document - 4.87MB). Alternatively, if you want only a brief guide to the AONB Management Plan, please take a look at the Summary document  which outlines the principles of the renewed Plan.

Plan downloads

The Management Plan is not just a plan to guide the work of the AONB Unit, it is intended to help all the organisations that make up the AONB Partnership carry out their functions in a way that helps deliver the conservation and enhancement of the natural beauty of the Area - what is known as the statutory purpose of designation.

Other pages in this section of the AONB website will help you find information on how the review was carried out and the assessment procedures that were required to ensure the revised Management Plan fulfils statutory and other legal obligations.

Links below take you to the suite of Plan documents (all in pdf format) that came out of the Review:

Strategic Environmental Assessment

Alongside the publication of a new Management Plan and the preparation of the AONB Action Plan, an Environmental Report has been produced in response to a Strategic Environmental Assessment, carried out as required under the European SEA Directive.

The Environmental Report is accompanied by a set of work sheets setting out both the SEA assessments and the additional Appropriate Assessment carried out on the Management Plan detail the impacts of the Management Plan on the environment of the AONB and the implications for the Natura 2000 Sites within the AONB.

Since the first Management Plan was written in 2004, new requirements have been placed on all those who write development plans of any kind by the European Directive on Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA).

Stategic Environmental Assessments are designed to prevent environmental damage occuring through the effects of a management or development plan being implemented. Even though the AONB Management Plan would be benign or even beneficial, given its "raison d'etre" is to deliver the conservation and enhancement of the AONB, the Plan has been subject to a full SEA during the recent review process.

 

How we did our SEA

What the SEA covered

The five stages in the SEA process that each AONB Partnership or Conservation Board was required to undertake are summarised below:

  • Stage A : Context, Baseline and Scope - Key Issues, Environmental Baseline, Predicting Trends, Relevant Plans and Policies, Objectives, Consideration of AONB Options, Scoping Report, Consultation
  • Stage B: Assessment - Developing and refining the Environmental Assessment and assessing effects
  • Stage C: Preparation of Environmental Report (ER) - The ER accompanies the draft management plan during public consultation and identifies shortcomings in information /suggests new research required.
  • Stage D: Consultation and Review - Public and Official Consultation on the Environmental Report and feedback
  • Stage E: Monitoring - Ensures the Environmental Report is taken into account during the implementation of the AONB Management Plan

What happened in this AONB

Stage A of the SEA Process was launched at the AONB Executive meeting in July 2007 - and a draft scoping report was produced by an Environmental Consultant, Sue Hunter, which was subject to formal consultation and discussion at the 2007 AONB Conference. The Assessment Process has to be carried out externally to the organisation responsible for the Plan that is subject to the SEA, so as to ensure as far as possible that rigourous and unbiased process has been followed.

Stage B was completed over the summer 2008, where when the formal adoption of the scoping report and the assessment of Management Plan Objectives against the agreed list of SEA Objectives took place. The Assessment tried to ensure there were minimal detrimental environment effects associated with the Management Plan from the outset.

The SEA Process highlighted conflicts and helped re-draft a number of Objectives, so as to prevent any foeseeable negative impacts, where the interpretation of an individual Objective may introduced uncertainty to arise.

The Scoping Report fed into the Management Plan review process, which ran in parallel with the SEA Process. Completion of SEA - stage C - with the presentation of a draft Environmental Report to the AONB Executive Committe in October 2008 led onto Stage D of the SEA process with a six week Public and Partner formal consultation (undertaken between October 24th to December 5th 2008).

Feedback from the consultation process was used to amend the Management Plan and review the detail of the Environmental Report. Following on from any changes made a final Environmental Report was issued in June 2009.

You will find links below to the suite of supporting documents (all in pdf format) that relate to SEA carried out during the Review of the Management Plan:

Appropriate Assessment

Additionally, the Management Plan underwent an Appropriate Assessment, focusing on the effects of the Plan on the "Natura 2000" sites in and around the AONB.

This stage is an additional requirement of the SEA Directive where the Plan area is close to or contains Special Areas of Conservation and Special Protection Areas estblished under the European Habitats and Birds Directives respectively (collectively termed Natura 2000 sites).  Again the Plan is largely benign in effect, but the AA process provided a useful health check for the policies contained in the Mangement Plan and helped clarify wording of a number of Policy Responces, so as to reduce the likelyhood of mis-interpretation.

You will find a link below to the supporting document (in pdf format) that relates to the Appropriate Assessment process carried out during the Review of the Management Plan:

back to top
asaonblfl