What about the Gwent Levels?!

Andrew Bettridge

To be completely transparent from the outset, I served as John Griffiths MS’s parliamentary lead throughout the sixth Senedd – a fact some readers may already know.

In the last six years, one of my proudest achievements was helping to raise awareness of the Gwent Levels, particularly the stretch between Newport and Chepstow which, unlike parts of the Levels closer to Cardiff, has largely escaped the scale of development seen elsewhere.

The Gwent Levels are an ancient and distinctive landscape along the Severn Estuary, nationally significant for both their environmental and historical importance. Home to eight Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), the Levels support rare habitats, plants and wildlife that have survived for centuries within a unique network of reens, marshes and wetlands.

My connection with the area began in the summer of 2020. As Wales emerged from the first Covid lockdown, I set out to explore the landscape around my new home in Newport. What I discovered was a type of landscape I had never seen before. The Levels possessed a quiet beauty and uniqueness that immediately struck me. Above all, Magor Marsh stood out. I regard it as the jewel in the Gwent Levels’ crown, yet it doesn’t get the attention I feel it deserves.

I am writing about this now because the M4 relief road, a proposal that never seems to disappear, has once again returned to the political agenda with a vengeance.

Welsh Labour is now joining Reform UK and the Conservatives in supporting its construction, despite having scrapped the project previously (and being far too sluggish on the delivery of the Burns Commission’s public transport alternatives).

During the sixth Senedd, government officials, environmental organisations and local campaign groups, including the Friends of the Gwent Levels, worked tirelessly behind the scenes to strengthen planning protections for the Levels and their SSSIs. As a result, the area between Newport and Chepstow has remained largely protected from major development.

However, if it were decided that a relief road should be built along the Black Route, or something closely resembling it, Pandora’s box would be opened, making the wider degradation of the Gwent Levels a very real possibility.

Once the principle of major development within this protected landscape has been established, it becomes far harder for ministers to resist future proposals, or to defend refusals when those decisions are challenged on appeal. Perhaps the most immediate threat would come from large-scale renewable energy projects, with developers chomping at the bit to exploit the area’s topography, strategic location and proximity to the grid.

Robust protection

When I worked for John, we always took a consistent and leading position on the Gwent Levels. This is a landscape of national and environmental significance, and whether the threat came from a major road-building scheme or large-scale solar developments, it deserved robust protection.

I have repeatedly put to supporters of the relief road that approving it would set a precedent: allowing one major development would make subsequent proposals much harder to resist, threatening SSSIs of national importance to Wales. That argument was usually met with silence.

The debate is therefore about much more than a single road. It is about whether one of Wales’ most distinctive landscapes continues to be defended long into the future, or whether the protections that have been put in place for the Levels are allowed to be weakened.

If they ever were, the Gwent Levels would prove almost impossible to restore. They will only be protected if we continue to collectively uphold the principle that some places are simply too important to lose.