Issue - meetings

To receive the Shropshire Hills National Landscape Management Plan 2025-2030.

The Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods, Planning and Sustainability, presented the report of the Director for Prosperity and Investment, which sought Cabinet’s approval of the statutory Shropshire Hills National Landscape Management Plan 2025 to 2030 and the Terms of Reference for a reformed Joint Advisory Committee for the National Landscape.

Councillor Healy said that the Shropshire Hills National Landscape was probably still known to most people as the area of outstanding natural beauty.

It was a key part of the borough’s visitor economy yet whilst only a small percentage of the national landscape sat within the borough, it attracted tourism and the borough benefitted economically from that.  Other attractions in the area, which included the Ironbridge Gorge, added to the visitor offer as well as visitor welcome facilities and hotels where people could stay in order to then explore all that the wider county had to offer.

It was a local landmark important to the borough and important too that the Council was part of the management of that special landscape. The management plan set out the management for the next five years, which had been subject to public consultation and also consultation with stakeholders, which included landowners and communities within the national landscape. It was a living landscape and a working landscape and the management for the next five years, set out priorities around nature recovery, addressing climate change and climate resilience, and connecting people to nature.

A revision to the terms of reference and the Joint Advisory Committee was necessary to ensure that that management remained focused on delivering against the plan and protecting this nationally important landscape for generations to come. The Cabinet Member thanked Councillor Mark Boylan, who was the Council’s representative on the Joint Advisory Committee and who had worked with her and officers on inputting into the plan.

RESOLVED – that Cabinet:

a)    approved the Shropshire Hills National Landscape Management Plan 2025-2030;

b)   approved the Terms of Reference for the new Shropshire Hills National Landscape Advisory Committee.