ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the limited awareness of countryside management responsibilities across the organisation, so that this was considered an add-on to other, more important local authority services. However, an alternative source of finance was to generate countryside management monies through the planning process and support open spaces work via Section 106 agreements with developers. The County Council was well aware of countryside management being an issue in wider governmental policies but it only considered acting on initiatives if grants were available to support County Council. It was observed that discretionary services like countryside management were always squeezed first. If government directives attached statutory function status to countryside management work, then funding would be found. The case study here was a County Council in the English midlands, with a Countryside Recreation Section in a Directorate for the environment and economy. The authority was chosen as a case study because it was just setting out on a process of establishing countryside management.