RDE 359 - Review of agricultural land take to development

Tender description

The Soils Team within Natural England are seeking to commission a research project to undertake a rapid, desk-based review to gather evidence on the amount of agricultural land take occurring as a result of development, including an assessment of the recent loss of high quality agricultural land (i.e. Best and Most Versatile (BMV) agricultural land), and an analysis of this against previous assessments to indicate whether and how land take is changing, and reflecting current policy. The Agricultural Land Classification (ALC) system was developed by MAFF (now part of Defra and the Welsh Government) in the mid 1960's to map the distribution of agricultural land quality across England and Wales, to a common standard. This was to characterise agricultural land quality and enable scarce high quality land to be protected from loss to development, through the planning system. This project was awarded by NE