What We Do
The Suffolk & Essex Coast & Heaths National Landscape team is based in Ipswich, Suffolk.
The team was first set up in 1990 to champion the then Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), since renamed a National Landscape in 2023, and provide a lead for the conservation of the protected landscape.
The National Landscape Partnership organisations sign a commitment to implement a Management Plan and agree to share a common vision for the long term care of the National Landscape.
Each Management Plan is produced following a period of consultation runs for a five-year period. The current Management Plan covers 2018-2023 is available to download (PDF).
The Plan should guide decision making in the nationally designated landscape and sets out a vision for the area and objectives on how that vision may be delivered
Some of the core aims and objectives of the team include:
- Acting as an advocate for the National Landscape by commenting on and influencing the important plans, strategies and development proposals likely to affect the National Landscape.
- Supporting the National Landscape Partnership and promoting its collective commitment to the Management Plan.
- Developing strategic approaches to the issues identified in the Management Plan.
- Stimulating, enabling and coordinating the activities of others to add value and minimise conflict.
- Demonstrating best practice in key projects which fulfil the Management Plan, and where best placed to, take the lead
- Monitoring change in key qualities so that the National Landscape can be alerted to the consequences of that change.
- Raising awareness of the area’s importance and value and providing a focus for all organisations and individuals with an interest in the area.
- Enabling community involvement that helps implement the National Landscape Management Plan’s objectives.
- Undertaking direct action to meet strategic objectives when others are unable to act.