The Green Party’s Prospective Parliamentary Candidate Julian Cusack today called on Natural England to consider designation of the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) as the ‘Suffolk Coast and Heaths National Park’.
Julian Cusack said, “The government has announced there will be a new national park in England[1] and now would be a good time to think about setting one up in the east of the country.”
In the last decade the landscape of East Suffolk has come under attack from a proliferation of proposals for major energy projects including subsea cable landfalls, cable corridors and converter stations relating to offshore wind farms and interconnectors. These entail digging trenches through the Suffolk Coast and Heaths AONB causing untold damage to sensitive habitats and wildlife and the construction of major infrastructure in historic rural communities.
Julian Cusack continued, “This vision for a semi-industrialised future for the East Suffolk coast is at odds with the former vision of a ‘Heritage Coast’ aimed at hosting a valuable tourism sector while meeting the AONB objectives of conserving and enhancing habitats and biodiversity.
Furthermore, it is in the middle of England’s East Coast wetlands which were added to the UK’s Tentative List of World Heritage sites earlier this year[2] recognising them as being of outstanding universal value to humanity.”
Julian Cusack concluded, “The AONB already meets the ‘natural beauty’ criteria for designation as a National Park and we believe that it also meets the test of providing opportunities for open-air recreation. With an over-riding obligation to conserve and enhance the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage of a National Park, we believe such a designation would help shift the focus back from ‘Energy Coast’ to ‘Heritage Coast’.“
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-pledges-to-boost-britains-access-to-nature-ahead-of-cop28
[2] https://www.rspb.org.uk/whats-happening/news/east-coast-wetlands