National Parks: Pollution Control

(asked on 9th October 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what discussions he has had with National Park Authorities on strengthening protections against light pollution.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 19th October 2020

The Government is engaging with National Park Authorities on a range of matters including the delivery of the 25-year Environment Plan and the Landscapes Review recommendations. There have been no recent discussions with National Park Authorities on the specific issue of strengthening protections against light pollution.

The government has put in place a range of measures to ensure that light pollution is effectively managed through controls in the planning system; the statutory nuisance regime, and when improvements are made to street lighting.

My department has worked with the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government and Department for Transport to ensure that the National Planning Policy Framework policies include consideration of the impact of light pollution from artificial light on local amenity, intrinsically dark landscapes and nature conservation, including where there may be impacts on wildlife and eco-systems.

We strongly welcome the designation of the South Downs National Park as an International Dark Sky Reserve, one of only 16 in the world. As a result of this designation the South Downs National Park Local Plan, adopted on 2 July 2019, has incorporated local policies to protect dark skies. We welcome the adoption of local policies for dark sky protection and understand their extension to other National Parks is under consideration.

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