The Government should honour a proposal to make the South Downs a national park, the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) said today.

The organisation has called for the area, which runs from Eastbourne to Winchester, to be given the status following plans to resume public consultation into the idea later this month.

The process was put on hold last year after a High Court judgment on the decision to make the New Forest a national park. The ruling appeared to have implications for the South Downs.

Emma Marrington, CPRE national park campaigner, said: "Now that the South Downs National Park designation process is back on track, the Government needs to keep its promise - confirm the national park, include all the land which merits national protection and establish a national park authority with full planning powers.

"Considering the Government promised this national park as a gift to the nation in 1999, it is certainly a long time coming. It's about time this precious landscape got the recognition it deserves."

The South Downs are renowned for their varied beauty, from rolling chalk uplands, steep escarpments, river valleys and dramatic chalk cliffs to wooded greens and ridges.

The process began in 2003 when the Countryside Agency submitted a designation order to the Government.

A public inquiry into the order ran from November that year until 2005 and Defra received the inspector's report in May 2006. The process was delayed following the ruling, known as the Meyrick Judgment, on a challenge to the New Forest national park designation.

It appeared to have implications for the South Downs as it potentially changed the way criteria for national park status had generally been understood since the Fifties.

A Defra spokeswoman said the South Downs process resumed in March. The public inquiry report into the designation order was being reviewed in the light of the Meyrick Judgment and Defra would be inviting further public representations shortly.

She said Ministers would then consider whether it was appropriate to reopen the inquiry."

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