Monitoring the state of the National Landscape

Understanding how and why the National Landscape is changing is key to our work in caring for it. Every 5 years since 2006 we have produced a State of the National Landscape (AONB) report. The data in these reports have been used to inform our 5 yearly reviews of the Management Plan, ensuring that policies and programmes for future work are responding to the changes taking place in the area. A long running association with the Department of Geography at the University of Worcester has been central to our monitoring work over this period of time.

New targets

Early in 2024 Defra published ambitious new targets for National Parks and National Landscapes, to reflect how these areas can make a real difference for nature, climate, people and place.  These targets have been described as a minimum contribution rather than a limit on a Protected Landscape’s ambition.  The Protected Landscape targets are non-statutory and create a shared ambition for all 44 of England’s Protected Landscapes. The targets are for the Protected Landscapes as places (the geographic area covered by the designation) rather than for specific organisations or people within it.  

This link to the data table provides a summary of the indicators currently in place and being used to monitor changing condition in the Malvern Hills National Landscape. This combines the new targets and data sets made available by central government with more established, local indicators.  Web links in the final column provide access to the data itself but the table also denotes whether the current trend in condition for that indicator (where a trend exists) is positive, negative or static. National target indicators set by central government are numbered.