'Landscape Character Assessment - How Stakeholders can help'

Topic Paper 3 published by The Countryside Agency and Scottish Natural Heritage, April 2002

Authors: Carys Swanwick, University of Sheffield; Liz Bingham, Countryside Agency; Alison Parfitt

This summary sheet was produced September 2006

Topic Paper 3 explains the nature of stakeholder involvement, some methods of engagement, and provides pointers to good practice including notes on workshop preparation, workshop structure and an example workshop plan.

Stakeholders are defined as "the whole constituency of individuals and groups who have an interest in a subject or place". Involving stakeholders in a LCA can produce a more informed assessment, greater ownership of applications, and establish valuable partnerships for future work.

In relation to landscape character, stakeholders can be divided into two categories; communities of interest and communities of place. The former consists of groups that have an interest in the landscape from a variety of perspectives, including government departments and agencies, local authorities and non-governmental organizations. The latter consists of individuals and groups who live or work in a particular area, or visit it. In practice there is much crossover between these categories. This paper recommends involving a wide range of people in any stakeholder involvement exercise to ensure broad representation, and acknowledging any omissions.

The paper draws a distinction between traditional methods of stakeholder involvement, which are generally one-way, professionally-led exercises and in which stakeholders assume a passive role, and more recent interactive methods of engagement. Various interactive methods are described, many of which emerged in reaction to Local Agenda 21. These include Village Design Statements, Parish Maps, the Local Heritage Initiative and other approaches and proprietary methodologies developed by public sector bodies and private consultancies. Individual approaches may be useful for LCA at specific scales, and may also only be relevant to either the preliminary characterisation or the subsequent judgement-making stage. Please note that the approaches mentioned in Topic Paper 3 should not be considered an exhaustive list, and particular methods that are mentioned may have evolved further since the paper was authored.

The paper also describes opportunities and practical techniques, such as the use of steering groups orquestionnaires, for involving both categories of stakeholders in LCA, identifying whether they are appropriate for characterisation or judgement making.

Case studies include the Cheshire Landscape Trust's methodology for Parish Landscape Statements, The Kent Downs Jigsaw Project and the Suffolk Millennium Challenge Landscape Recording Project.

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