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Local Authorities and Sustainable Peatland Management: Current Opportunities and Future Possibilities for Local Approaches
do anything they consider necessary to facilitate the enjoyment of the area by the public. The latter includes erecting buildings and carrying out works and providing parking and places for refreshment. Interestingly, there may also be areas of local authority owned land widely referred to as Country Parks that have not been legally designated as such. Local authorities can carry out SPM where this exists in Local Nature Reserves and Country Parks. However, these designated areas may have an important role in supporting SPM through recognition of their significance to a wider upland or lowland landscapes. These connections can be used to highlight the cultural benefits of peatlands and their contribution to tourism (discussed in detail below). County Farms are also local authority owned land that can be important to SPM. In 2021, there were 896 County Farms in Wales, providing a total of 15,577ha. As you might expect the local authorities for which this will be most significant (holding more than 1000 has as small holdings land) are the rural, largely lowland, areas of Wales: Carmarthenshire, Gwynedd, Ise of Anglesey, Monmouthshire, Pembrokeshire and Powys. The deep peat map for Wales suggests that with the exception of Powys, these local authority areas are least likely to have significant areas of peatland. However, as noted above, there are limitations to this data so, for example, these farms may include areas of shallower peat or smaller areas of deep peat that are not clear on this map. Although County Farms are in local authority ownership, they are tenanted farms so local authorities will need to work with those individuals responsible for managing the land. The processes for awarding tenancies and the contracts that underline these will need to be carefully considered to ensure they do not present a barrier to methods of farming that support SPM. Local authorities can contribute to SPM through landownership either on land they have already purchased or by buying land for this purpose. Local authorities have wide powers to purchase land to carry out its functions or for the benefit, improvement or development of its area. Repurposing land already in its ownership or buying land could be particularly significant in the context of biodiversity and carbon ‘offsetting’ either for their own operations or the purposes of other organisations. This is supported, for example, by the strong policy presumption in land use planning that new development will deliver biodiversity net benefit. Opportunities to provide biodiversity net benefit for developers could be provided on local authority owned land. Another example is the requirement for local authorities to report on GHG emissions as part of the commitment to meet the net zero target for the public sector by 2030. This reporting includes activities that further carbon storage and sequestration to off-set GHG emissions from other local authority activities.
Other Policy Development Local authorities are involved in developing policy to support their key functions and/or to help promote Welsh Government objectives with respect, for example, to international commitments regarding biodiversity and climate change. Local authority strategies for climate change and those regarding culture, heritage and tourism are particularly significant to SPM.
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