Scottish Landscape Forum

Terms Of Reference

1. The Forum is a group of public and non-governmental bodies with a common interest in the well-being, management and use of Scotland’s landscape. It has been established by Scottish Natural Heritage with the support of the Scottish Executive, with a focus on national landscape issues. Its purpose is to facilitate discussion, prepare advice and promote action for the better care of Scotland’s landscape, and thereby to enable its diversity, quality and integrity to be maintained for future generations to enjoy.

2. As the term’ landscape’ can mean different things to different people, its use here is explained in an annex in order to clarify the Forum’s focus.

Remit

3. The Scottish Landscape Forum provides an independent platform for sharing information about and encouraging broad-based discussion on all aspects of landscape. Its objectives include:

• improving mutual understanding of landscape issues, and promoting the actions and behaviours that are required to achieve better landscape care;
• promoting cross-sectoral working on landscape issues, and generating a shared commitment to implement actions; and
• preparing advice and guidance relevant to landscape issues, with appropriate recommendations being submitted to the Scottish Executive and Scottish Natural Heritage.

Ways of Working

4. The Forum will work to fulfil its remit in the following ways:

• The Forum is expected to meet three or four times between June 2006 and March 2007.
• The Secretariat to the Forum will be provided by SNH and will be responsible for setting meeting dates, preparing agendas, circulating minutes and papers, etc.
• The Secretariat in discussion with the Chair will aim to ensure that discussion papers are available on relevant topics consistent with a work programme for input to the landscape review of NPPG14. Forum members will be invited to suggest additional topics for the agenda.
• Sub-groups may be established to look at particular topics as necessary, and the Forum may invite other interests to attend meetings of the Forum or submit written comments as appropriate.
• The Forum will not be bound in its discussions by existing policies and approaches. While the Forum should strive to reach a collective view, any conclusions reached will not be binding on individual member bodies.
• Forum members will bring forward the views of their organisation (and those of their general sector where appropriate), and listen to and reflect on the views offered by others.
• The Forum’s work will be undertaken in an open manner, with all agendas, papers and minutes made publicly available, through the internet. Wider interests and the general public will be encouraged to contribute to the Forum’s work through electronic media, such as a message board.
• Membership of the Forum will comprise those listed in the table below, reflecting the agencies and representative organisations that have specific responsibilities towards the landscape or which, of themselves or through their members, have a strong hand in shaping it. It is recognised that this is a restricted list, which does not seek to capture directly the full and extremely wide range of bodies with a legitimate interest in landscape.

Regulator/professional representatives	Landscape focused representatives	Landscape shapers	Wider community interest
CoSLA	Activity Scotland Association	Forestry Commission Scotland	Association of Scottish Community Councils
Educational representative	Architecture & Design Scotland	Highlands and Islands Enterprise	Black Environment Network
Landscape Institute Scotland	Historic Scotland	Homes for Scotland	Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations
Royal Town Planning Institute	Built Environment Forum Scotland	National Farmers Union Scotland
	Greenspace Scotland	Scottish Council for Development and Industry
	Scottish Environment Link	Scottish Enterprise
	Scottish Environment Protection Agency	Scottish Rural Property and Business Association
	Scottish Natural Heritage
	VisitScotland

Observer – Scottish Executive (Landscape and Habitats Division)

ANNEX - What is landscape?

i) The term landscape can mean different things to different people, so the following seeks to explain the meaning of landscape that provides the focus of the Forum’s attention.

ii) The European Landscape Convention defines landscape as ‘an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors’. Landscape therefore encompasses all the physical elements of the environment that surround us – the natural (landform, water, and natural vegetation) and the cultural (the patterns of land use, buildings and other structures – old and new). But as well as the physical fabric, it is people’s experience and perception of the land and adjacent sea that turns their surroundings into landscape.

iii) We experience and perceive the landscape predominantly through sight, but the totality draws upon all our senses, together with the feelings, memories and associations evoked by different places. These can create a very personal response, which can change over time. Individuals and communities will thus understand and appreciate a landscape in subtly and significantly different ways.

iv) Our appreciation of landscape will depend in part on the values we attribute to a particular place, and these inform our preferences for one landscape over another. Preference is a very individual and subjective matter but despite this there are some widely-shared and long-held opinions about which landscapes have special merit.

v) Separate and distinct from the values and preferences people hold, landscapes can be defined through a largely objective assessment of their character. Character is what defines a landscape’s particular sense of place, comprising the distinct and recognisable pattern of elements that occurs consistently in a particular type of landscape and the way in which these are perceived by people. Landscape can also be analysed on the basis of its different elements, such as the record of historical change embodied in today’s cultural features, and the habitats and geological and physiographic features that are present.