Welcome to the Yorkshire Landscape Planning Forum
The Yorkshire Landscape Planning Forum (YLPF) is an informal network local planning authorities and related organisations, based in and around Yorkshire.
A Brief History
YLPF was originally formed by Natural England's York regional office, in 2008, as the Regional Landscape Forum. It was aimed at bringing together everyone in the region with an interest in landscape, to share experiences and best practice, keep up to date, seek coordinated responses to regional issues, strengthen the sector and give it a stronger voice within the region. This website was set up in 2011, and used to provide links to all of the authorities and, where relevant, their Landscape Character Assessment documents.
In 2014, Natural England had to withdraw from hosting and organising meetings, so the members carried on regardless until lockdown in 2021, which resulted in the abandoning of face to face meetings. Over time, the website links became outdated, as a result of website reorganisation and, indeed, local authority reorganisation, such as the combining of several district authorities under the North Yorkshire banner.
Landscape Character Assessments
Regarding links to published Landscape Character Assessments, that function is now more ably addressed by the Landscape Institute / Natural England initiative “Landscape character assessment database for the UK and Ireland” located here https://landscapeinstitute.org/technical-resource/landscape-character-assessment-lca-database/. There is an ambition to turn the database into a spatial format (map) which would make it easy to zoom in on places of interest and find links to relevant LCA reports.
The Future
There remain strong reasons for local and other authorities to come together and discuss matters of common interest in relation to landscape planning. The idea of meetings - likely hosted online - has been mooted, with a number of authorities responding positively. If you work for such an authority, please contact 2b AT 2bconsultancy DOT co DOT uk for further information and to be added to a circulation list for future communications and meetings.