An opportunity to enhance our distinctive local environment and positively shape the place where you live.

Devon contains a rich diversity of high-quality and distinctive landscapes which attract people to live, work and visit, and contribute to a sense of belonging and identity. As well as being the setting for everyday lives, Devon’s landscapes also provide areas of beauty and tranquillity which provide opportunities to improve mental and physical wellbeing.

Recognising landscape in neighbourhood plans provides an opportunity to identify what makes the place where you live unique, and to ensure that its special qualities and distinctive characteristics are protected, and enhanced, through the neighbourhood planning process.

This advice note introduces ‘landscape’ as a planning term. It explains why landscape is an important consideration in neighbourhood plans and introduces the range of landscape evidence which already exists within Devon. It then provides practical advice on how the landscape evidence should be used and presented to inform neighbourhood planning policy. There is also a reference list, providing internet links to sources of further information.