Accounting for Nature: Assessing habitats in the UK countryside
8.   Developed Land in Rural Areas

Conclusions

8.15 The Built-up and Gardens Broad Habitat and transport features totalled about 2.3 million ha in 1998, almost 10% of the total land surface of Great Britain. In rural areas in Great Britain, the cover of developed land has increased by about 4% since 1990.

8.16 Rates of urban expansion and road development depend on three main factors: the policy context, the state of the general economy and demographic trends. Over the last two decades, these factors contributed to a period of rapid growth. Economic and demographic pressures are likely to remain for the foreseeable future. For example, increased people’s life expectancy, higher separation rates, and later family-establishment together mean that it is likely that household growth will continue for years to come.

Box 8.1: Using LCM2000 to monitor urban land and development in and around Cambridge

The ability of LCM2000 to identify and map different urban land cover types is shown here. The map depicts the distribution of continuous urban, suburban and industrial land around Cambridge. In addition to data on land cover, derived from LCM2000, the map includes 1991 boundaries of urban land, as defined by DETR on the basis of Ordnance Survey information. LCM2000 identifies urban land covers. Comparison with other definitions of urban areas, such as DETR 1991 urban areas, reveals differences. In particular, several areas (e.g. those labelled X and Y), which are identified as urban by the DETR classification, actually contain very little built-up land. Area X is, in fact, the University of Cambridge radio telescopes and Y is Cambridge Airport: both sites thus consist of large, open grassland areas with only isolated buildings and structures. Many of the other areas of discrepancy between the two data sets relate to areas of open urban land (e.g. sports fields), which are not separately identified in the DETR data. Other elements are smaller urban areas, which the generalised DETR boundaries exclude. Yet others are new developments, built since DETR mapping. In all these cases, use of the LCM2000 data helps to delineate built-up areas more precisely, and adds value to other data sets.

8.17 Much of the need for new homes has hitherto been in areas such as the south east of England. It is unlikely that this pressure will diminish in the short term. Government policies are to direct as much housing development as possible towards brownfield sites, but the area of previously developed sites is limited. It is likely, therefore that some greenfield development will also be needed in the future, but Government policy is to restrict the level of greenfield development considerably.

8.18 Results of CS2000 suggest that most greenfield development has occurred on improved agricultural land but that a proportion has taken place at the expense of Broadleaved Woodland and Neutral Grasslands. However, these losses of habitats to development are partly compensated, in simple area terms, by restoration of previously developed land. For example, more Broadleaved Woodland was created on previously developed land than was lost to development. In order to establish a more complete picture, the field survey data must be integrated with other information sources, such as DETR’s Land Use Change Statistics, which are available for England and Land Cover Map 2000 for UK as a whole.

8.19 Land Cover Map 2000 (LCM2000) will provide information on the distribution of Built-up and Gardens throughout the UK at the resolution of individual estates and developments. An example of the application of LCM2000 is shown in Box 8.1. Here LCM2000 is used to show the stock of Built-up land, and to identify areas of recent urban development in the Cambridge area.

8.20 As already mentioned, Government policy has in recent years increasingly emphasised the need to make use of brownfield sites for development, in order to reduce land take in the countryside. Thus considerable changes may be expected within the core urban area and around the urban fringe. The new classification methods developed for the production of LCM2000 will allow such changes to be monitored, and the link with the CS2000 field survey data will enable us to understand their wider ecological significance.