The map alongside shows an assessment of Tranquillity across the West Midlands. The darker the green the more tranquil the area ranging to red, the least tranquil areas. As may be expected the city of Birmingham is the least tranquil part of the West Midlands and other towns such as Stafford and Newcastle are similarly coloured.
The definition of tranquillity?
Tranquillity is the quality of calm experienced in places with mainly natural features and activities, free from disturbance from manmade ones.
Tranquil areas are places where a quality of calm can be experienced in the presence of mainly natural features and activities, and the absence of disturbance from manmade ones.

Tranquillity offers great rewards
Tranquillity is widely recognised as a powerful contributor to the sense of well being of many people. In a survey by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), tranquillity was identified by 58% of respondents as an enjoyable aspect of the countryside and was the most common reason for visiting it. Tranquillity does not mean silence - far from it. Natural sites and sounds of wildlife, water, and 'wind through leaves' are associated with 'peace and quiet' and identified as key to tranquillity. Time and again researchers have found that the countryside is integral to our experience of tranquillity. Few people have worked out exactly what the benefits of tranquillity are, even though information on the benefits of contact with nature abounds. If contact with nature is good for you, tranquillity is good for you too.
In this country, stress and mental illness are increasingly common, as are physical health problems related to inactivity and obesity, including adult onset diabetes. According to the World Health Organisation, mental illness such as depression is likely to be the primary cause of ill health by 2020 . The associated costs to public health care are increasing. This is recognised in the overarching priorities of the Government's Public Health White Paper of 2004, which are to reduce obesity, increase exercise and improve mental health.

We believe efforts to protect and enhance tranquil areas would help the Government to address these priorities. There is growing and substantial evidence to show that exposure to nature can contribute to physical health and psychological wellbeing. While there are different levels of contact with nature - views of natural features, incidental exposure to nature and being active in a natural environment - tranquil areas represent reservoirs of natural features. These provide access to a green environment which can offer a wide range of health benefits.

CPRE believes that the preservation and protection of tranquil areas is of immense benefit to society and should be one of the key parameters in assessing development of all types. Cpre will be campaigning to try to ensure that tranquillity is seriously considered troughout planning phases.

Protecting tranquillity through environmental appraisal
There are two types of environmental appraisals:
· A sustainability appraisal (SA), which is undertaken on plans and programmes such as regional spatial strategies and local development documents and which incorporates strategic environmental assessment (SEA)
· An environmental impact assessment (EIA), which is carried out on individual large planning applications

The 'EIA directive' (European Directive 85/337) became law in 1998; the 'SEA Directive' (European Directive 2001/42/EC) in 2004.

Both types of appraisal aim to improve decision-making by avoiding or mitigating changes that could significantly affect the environment. Deciding what is 'significant' is open to interpretation. So it's up to you to convince local planners that tranquillity is a key part of our environment that needs protecting in their policies. How can you do that? Read on.

Why tranquillity should be part of environmental appraisal
Getting planners to consider tranquillity in environmental appraisals is useful because it could:
· Generate new policy ideas for protecting and extending tranquillity
· Improve the likelihood of a proposed development plan policy on tranquillity being adopted.

The Government's Practical Guide to the SEA Directive (Figure 11, page 65) suggests that the 'proportion of tranquil areas' could be used as an SEA Indicator.

The Government guide Sustainability Appraisal of Regional Spatial Strategies and Local Development Documents (Appendix 6, Figure 17, p.91) suggests the following questions could help decide which baseline information to collect for a sustainability appraisal:
· (For Regional Spatial Strategies) 'Are there any parts of the region that have been defined as tranquil areas and how have these changed over time?'
· (For Local Development Documents) 'Are there any parts of the plan area that suffer from excessive noise levels?'

Appendix 13 (p.137) of the same guide suggests that the loss of tranquillity (alongside changes in landscape, economic decline and climate change) is an example of a cumulative, synergistic or secondary effect of change and states that 'these effects are very hard to deal with on a project by project basis through EIA… it is at the SA level that these effects are most effectively identified and addressed'.

Getting tranquillity into sustainability appraisals
You have the opportunity to push for tranquillity protection at several stages in the process of SA (stages A, B and D).

Stage A: Use CPRE's tranquillity maps as a baseline indicator of tranquillity and make tranquillity protection an explicit SA objective
Stage A is when an SA report is being prepared, before formal consultation takes place. You need to get in early and persuade your local planners that tranquillity is a significant environmental issue in your area, and that using CPRE's tranquillity materials can help them produce a sound plan to protect and enhance it. You can also mention that Government guidance encourages regional planning bodies and local planning authorities to identify sustainability issues for appraisal in consultation with stakeholders and the public (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Sustainability Appraisal of Regional Spatial Strategies and Local Development Documents 2005, para 2.2.13, and 3.2.11).

The SEA Directive requires planning authorities to report on the current state of the environment ('the baseline') and how it will evolve without the implementation of the plan or programme. You could encourage planners to use CPRE's tranquillity map to form part of this baseline. For example, the SAs of both the Derbyshire Local Transport Plan and the Norfolk Minerals and Waste Development Framework (both produced in 2005) use CPRE's 1990s tranquillity map as an indicator of landscape character. We hope that future sustainability appraisals will use our new tranquillity map, which is based on a more sophisticated and rigorous methodology.

You also have an opportunity at this stage to influence what goes in the SA framework, another key part of the SA report. All planning policies are required to be evaluated against the SA framework. The framework, in turn, should be taken into account when the planners develop their project plan (for a regional spatial strategy) or local development scheme (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 2005, op cit, para 2.2.5 and 3.3.2).

The SA framework consists of a series of objectives. You could ask that protecting tranquillity be made a specific objective, as has happened elsewhere, such as:
· In the 2005 Local Transport Plan for Telford and Wrekin (objective: 'protect areas of both urban and rural tranquillity')
· In the SA of the Tynedale draft core strategy (February 2006), where protecting tranquil areas is part of a checklist under Sustainability Objective 10

Stage B: Improve tranquillity through mitigation measures
Once objectives and indicators have been set, planners have to generate policy options and justify a preferred policy in relation to the appraisal findings, with a view to minimising environmental harm. Government guidance encourages public participation in this stage of the process (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 2005, op cit, para 2.3.2 and 3.3.2).

A number of SAs in the most recent round of Local Transport Plans have generated new policy ideas for improving as well as merely protecting tranquillity. Show your planners the examples from Medway and Telford and Wrekin:
· The SA of Medway Council's Local Transport Plan identifies an opportunity to reduce the damage to tranquillity from transport at specific noise-sensitive locations, such as schools and nurseries
· Telford and Wrekin Council has generated a number of mitigation measures to protect tranquillity, such as using noise-reducing surfacing in road resurfacing works and replacing existing public transport vehicles when redundant with low-noise vehicles

Back to Top