New maps published by countryside campaigners CPRE [1] today (Monday) reveal England’s tranquil places in unprecedented local detail.

Later this week the important but neglected issue of protecting tranquil places will be raised in the House of Commons. John Penrose MP is calling on the Government to measure tranquillity systematically and secure it for future generations with a Bill which has all-party backing. [2]

NOTE FOR EDITORS
Copies of CPRE’s county and national tranquillity maps plus this news release are available at: www.cpre.org.uk/news/media-centre. Note the embargo. [3]

Mr Penrose, Conservative and MP for Weston-super-Mare, said: ‘How many of us can still stand outside our front doors and enjoy a moment’s peace and quiet? Will our children and grandchildren even remember the true meaning of tranquillity?

‘Existing planning policy pays lip service to the principle of protecting tranquillity. Yet our remaining pockets of peace are being eaten away by the threat from development, urban sprawl and increasing road or air traffic. It’s not just our countryside, it’s our Green Belt, our Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Even our parks and urban gardens.

‘Unless we act now, it will be too late. We must protect our existing havens and guarantee that tranquillity doesn’t become an obscure footnote in history.’

His Ten Minute Rule Bill will be presented to Parliament on Wednesday 7 March.

Norman Baker, Liberal Democrat and MP for Lewes, East Sussex, said: ‘Tranquillity isn’t just about protecting England’s few large remaining areas of deep tranquillity in the most remote areas, like Dartmoor and Northumbria. There are often important relatively tranquil places on our doorstep, such as in the Green Belts surrounding our big towns and cities.’

David Taylor, Labour and MP for Leicestershire North West, said: ‘Tranquillity is one of the greatest benefits we get from the countryside. Unless the Government introduces policies to protect tranquillity, we will keep losing more and more of this precious resource.’

The Bill comes as CPRE launches 46 new county versions of its acclaimed national tranquillity map. [4]

The maps are the fruit of research by Northumbria and Newcastle Universities [5] over the past three years. They are based on hard data on noise, development and physical surroundings at a very local level combined with extensive surveys of what adds to or detracts from people’s experience of tranquillity. Every 500 metre by 500 metre square in England is given its own tranquillity score.

Seeking out tranquillity and experiencing its benefits matters deeply to people. Poll after poll shows it is a key reason people visit the countryside [6]. It is also important for rural economies and employment. [7]

CPRE Chief Executive Shaun Spiers said: ‘Tranquil places contribute to our health, both mental and physical, and our quality of life. It’s hugely valuable for all of us, wherever we live, to be able to get away from it all into the countryside – including the countryside around towns.’

The Government has often recognised the value of rural tranquillity [8], yet it has done too little so far to protect it. Instead, current policies threaten to shrink and shatter the tranquil areas we still have:

• new buildings and infrastructure – 27 square miles of greenfield are lost each year to development, an area nearly the size of Leicester [9]; Green Belt and designated landscapes remain threatened by project after project;
• road traffic increases relentlessly and billions are being spent to widen major roads, spreading noise further into tranquil areas; [10]
• massive aviation expansion – Government is supporting huge increases in airport capacity across England to satisfy our voracious appetite for cheap air travel while throwing noise across the landscape; [11]
• With greenfield development and sprawl comes growing light pollution, and sky glow blocking out our ancestral experience of seeing the stars. [12]

All of England’s National Parks – including the New Forest in Hampshire and the designated South Downs National Park – still contain substantial areas of very tranquil countryside. So do all the designated Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Areas of ‘ordinary’ countryside rich in tranquillity also remain, but the countryside is under remorseless pressure.

CPRE Chief Executive Shaun Spiers concluded: ‘Real protection for tranquillity is urgently needed, to defend it permanently and, where we can, to improve on what we have. MPs from all parties are championing this cause on Wednesday in the House of Commons. We urge the Government to sit up, take notice and act.’

– END –

NOTES FOR EDITORS

1. CPRE, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, is a charity which promotes the beauty, tranquillity and diversity of rural England. We advocate positive solutions for the long-term future of the countryside. Founded in 1926, we have 60,000 supporters and a branch in every county. President: Sir Max Hastings. Patron: Her Majesty The Queen.

2. Wednesday 7 March: House of Commons Business. Ten Minute Rule Motion: John Penrose MP: Rural Tranquillity: That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for the establishment of an indicator for rural tranquillity; to provide for the protection of rural tranquillity in the planning process; and for connected purposes.

3. If you cannot download from our website (www.cpre.org.uk/news/media-centre) contact our press office (020 7981 2880). As well as counties, our new maps cover the major conurbations and the areas covered by unitary councils.

4. CPRE’s tranquillity maps show in close up how likely local surroundings are to make someone feel tranquil. The scale from most to least tranquil is shown on a spectrum from green – for the most unspoilt areas of the English countryside – to red in towns and cities. The researchers have further developed the mapping since CPRE launched its new national map of tranquillity in October 2006. Road noise effects have been refined and the coast is now mapped out to low water mark.

5. The research team came from Northumbria University’s Centre for Environmental and Spatial Analysis and Participatory Evaluation and Appraisal in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Newcastle University’s Landscape Research Group and Bluespace environments, Durham.

6. In a YouGov opinion poll commissioned by CPRE last September tranquillity – and its various manifestations – was mentioned, unprompted, by 72% of 2,248 respondents as one of the things they most enjoyed or appreciated about the countryside. The words people mainly used were peace and quiet, relaxation, tranquil, calm, serene, wide open spaces, freedom, escape, solitude and getting away from towns, cities, crowds, concrete, buildings. 61% of people said rural tranquillity was very important to them and 34% said it was fairly important to them.

A (Government) Survey of Public Attitudes to Quality of Life and to the Environment: 2001 on the Defra website. Under the heading ‘Things that make the countryside a place where respondents want to spend time’, peace and quiet was the most common reason for visiting the countryside. The five most mentioned positive features of the countryside were tranquillity (58 per cent), scenery (46 per cent), open space (40 per cent), fresh air (40 per cent) and plants and wildlife (36 per cent).

A 2004 Mori poll for the National Trust survey (called Landscapes in Britain) found that 49% of visitors to the countryside go there seeking peace and quiet.

7. Defra, Rural Strategy 2004, p46: ‘All in all, the attractiveness and tranquillity of the countryside, underpinned by Defra’s investment in the maintenance and improvement of key environmental assets, continues to represent a major opportunity for rural businesses in the recreation and tourism sector. Visitors can do much for the prosperity of places they visit. Research by the Countryside Agency in 2003 showed, for example, that the South West Coast Path generated £307 million income in a year for the regional economy.’

8. The Rural White Paper in 2000 recognised the ‘variety of things we value in the countryside’ and committed the Government to publish ‘a measure of change in countryside quality, including such issues as biodiversity, tranquillity, heritage and landscape character……’ (Our countryside: the future, paragraph 9.5.2). In 2004, DEFRA’s Rural Strategy recognised ‘The countryside provides many benefits. It is valued for its wildlife, landscape and cultural heritage and also tranquillity’ (page 34).

9. On average, 6,870 hectares – or nearly 27 square miles – of undeveloped land becomes developed each year, according to the Government’s Land Use Change Statistics – Table F1, Land Use Change in England to 2004: Additional Table LUCS-20A, DCLG, 2005. Leicester City Council’s area is 7,337 hectares.

10. From 1994 to 2004 road traffic in Great Britain, measured in vehicle kilometres, rose by 37% on motorways, 21% on rural A roads and 14% on minor rural roads, according to Department for Transport statistics. The total length of roads rose by 15% between 1980 and 2000. In 2004 the Department projected that road traffic would grow by 31% between 2000 and 2015.

11. The Future of Air Transport, DfT, 2003. The DfT’s mid range forecast was for numbers of UK passengers to rise from 229 million in 2005 to 401 million in 2020 with further growth thereafter.

12. A CPRE analysis of satellite data found that from 1993 to 2000 the proportion of England’s land area from which people could view a truly dark night sky fell from 15% to 11%. CPRE published UK maps of light pollution based on data collected by US military weather satellites in 2003.