Last week Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs signed an order confirming the designation of the South Downs National Park.
The designation process originally started in April 2000. Following a period of public consultation the Countryside Agency – now Natural England – made a National Park designation order in December 2002 showing the area that it believed should be included. A variation order was also made in 2004 to include land around Arundel.
The proposed boundary was considered in detail at the resulting Public Inquiry that ran between 10 November 2003 and 18 March 2005. Following changes to designation legislation in 2006 the inquiry reopened for a further 5 months in 2008, and the Inspector submitted his final report (effectively his second one) to the Minister in November 2008.
Having given due regard to the Inspector’s recommendations. on 31st March 2009 the Minister announced his intention to confirm the South Downs National Park designation order with modifications. This means that the confirmed National Park boundary is different from that originally proposed by the Countryside Agency in 2002. The new resultant National Park boundary is shown below. As required by law the Minister undertook further consultations in respect of the 6 areas added to the area originally proposed for designation.
Additional information can be found on the Defra website.
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Anyone know what this is likely to mean in terms of development of specific MTB resources – trails, facilities, restrictions, anything?
well developments in the Peak District have been pretty limited for thise wanting more access to “single track” – for leisure and from getting from a to b avoiding vehicles there are trails such as the Tissington Trail a
my concern would be that riding a bike on other than a bridleway or byway could become an offence under byelaws like it is in the Peak, not that it is enforced – but it could be and with quite large fines – might be time to write to yr MP asking for a CROW style right of access for people powered bikes