The Countryside Agency issued in 2004 and 2005 eight conclusive maps of open country (land consisting wholly or predominantly of mountain, moor, heath or down) and registered common land (RCL) in England, which became the basis of the open access rights that the public now enjoys over the mapped areas, subject to the limitations set out by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 (CROW).

Natural England has a statutory duty to review these maps.

During the original 2004/05 mapping exercise the ability of the Countryside Agency to map downland was substantially impeded because the legislation did not allow for it to be mapped as a topographical feature.

There's a lack of any authoritative definitions of downland, and no existing datasets recording it.

In order for the review to address this issue, we want to commission some research to define the downland landform.

This definition will be used to inform the development of a Mapping Review Statutory Methodology.

We want this study to look afresh at the whole downland issue by independently and objectively evaluating the relevant evidence both on the ground and in terms of historical or contemporary studies, publications, maps, datasets.

We want the study to explore whether it is practicable and workable for the whole downland landform in each case to be defined and identified on maps, rather than any individual land parcels occurring within each identified down being considered individually and separately from each other, as happened under the original mapping process.

Subject to government procurement process, we would like the work to start this financial year and completed in Q1/Q2 next FY.

This work will likely involve some desk based historical mapping/dataset research plus site visits of pilot areas to identify downland.