In 2003 DEFRA ordered an inquiry into whether or not the South Downs should be given National Park status, and if it were, which parts of the area should be included within the boundaries. National Parks are areas of outstanding beauty within which property and commercial development are restricted. On Monday DEFRA published the inquiry inspector Robert Neil Parry’s report.
He recommended that the South Downs should be added to the fourteen existing National Parks in the UK, which include such areas as The Lake District and Dartmoor. However he added a number of provisos in his recommendations, including the exclusion of the settlements of Lewes and Ditchling from The National Park.
On a positive note he did suggest some local additions to the previously understood boundaries of the area, including the land to the west and south of Ringmer, east of Glynde, and Tide Mills.
Property developers hoping to build on the periphery of Lewes will be pleased by the news, as planning restrictions within National Park areas are more stringent than otherwise: new developments in National Parks have to be sympathetically designed to fit in with their surroundings. Lewes would also have benefited from the extra funding which would have gone into enhancing links (including foot and cycle paths) with the countryside, and the increase in tourism which would have followed its inclusion in the NP (though there will certainly be a knock-on increase in tourism anyway). However the inspector’s findings are not unexpected: the town was always considered ‘vulnerable’ to exclusion as it would have become the biggest settlement within any of the National Parks in the country.
The results of the inquiry are not set in stone, but DEFRA would have to have sound reasons for ignoring the inspector’s recommendations. It is now down to independent groups to come up with these reasons, and to lobby the relevant Minister.