Officials managing some of Britain’s most famous landscapes have published plans to attract more ethnic minority visitors, following a government-commissioned report that warned the countryside was seen as ‘very much a white environment’ and risked becoming ‘irrelevant’ in a multicultural society.
The review, ordered by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) in 2019 and overseen by author Julian Glover, stated: ‘We are all paying for national landscapes through our taxes, and yet sometimes on our visits it has felt as if National Parks are an exclusive, mainly white, mainly middle‑class club.’ It added that ‘many communities in modern Britain feel that these landscapes hold no relevance for them’.
In response, National Landscape authorities including the Cotswolds, Chilterns, Malvern Hills, Nidderdale, Cranborne Chase, Surrey Hills, Suffolk and Essex Coast Heaths, and Dedham Vale have set out measures in their management plans. The Chiltern National Landscape will launch an outreach programme in Luton and High Wycombe targeting Muslims, while the Cotswolds said it was dedicated to reaching ‘the widest demographic’.
The Malvern Hills National Landscape noted that ‘many minority peoples have no connection to nature in the UK because their parents and their grandparents did not feel safe enough to take them’, and added that while ‘most white English users value solitude … the tendency for ethnic minority people is to prefer social company’. Nidderdale warned that ethnic minorities may face barriers including ‘concerns about how they will be received when visiting an unfamiliar place’.
Other barriers identified include ‘anxiety over unleashed dogs’ and lack of information for people without English as a first language. Defra spent £108,000 on a second report in 2022 titled ‘Improving the ethnic diversity of visitors to England’s protected landscapes’, which found that ‘perceptions of protected landscapes as being for white people’ persisted. The then-Conservative government pledged to expand community engagement to increase ethnic and socioeconomic diversity among visitors.
