Landscape Maintenance Plan

3.  The overall objectives of the Landscape Maintenance Plan shall be to promote and sustain healthy growth, to maximise planting objectives, to minimise problems, to encourage biodiversity and to ensure all planting becomes as self reliant as possible.  The Landscape Maintenance Plan shall respect (and provide for) the maintenance of [Additional Areas] the responsibility of third parties under Contracts under Section 146 of the Highways Act 1980.

4.  The Landscape Maintenance Plan shall record and determine the annual cyclic and other routine landscape maintenance requirements for each section of the Project Network.  The Landscape Maintenance Plan shall also include any items of intermittent maintenance which may be required to ensure the healthy management of the environment.

5.  The Landscape Maintenance Plan shall be directly cross-referenced to the Landscape Inventory.

6.  The maintenance activities shall be integrated with the Landscape Inventory cross-referenced to a maintenance schedule detailing the following minimum information:

6.1  area and plan reference;

6.2  description - including prominent species;

6.3  Environmental functions for each landscape elements;

6.4  maintenance requirements;

6.5  total area and linear measurement (along road);

6.6  timing of maintenance activities over the year; and

6.7  summary of maintenance activities for following years.

7.  The Landscape Maintenance Plan and the Landscape Inventory shall be directly cross-referenced to Ordnance Survey maps or such other mapping system as may be in use within the Council during the Contract Period.

8.  Each Landscape Maintenance Plan prepared by the Service Provider shall include the specific objective of any planted area and a pesticide reduction plan specifying instances of existing herbicide use and targets for reduction in use, through alternative but equally effective proposals.

9.  Where there shall be specially designated conservation sites on or adjacent to the Project Network the requirements of English Nature shall be included within the Landscape Maintenance Plan.

10.  Where within the Project Network flora and fauna of local or national interest exist which have been identified by the English Nature or a local biodiversity action plan as being of nature conservation value the specified requirements shall be included within the Landscape Maintenance Plan.

11.  The Service Provider shall adopt methods by which data on the landscape features of the Project Network shall be collected, coded and presented within the Landscape Maintenance Plan.  The Landscape Maintenance Plan shall enable the physical nature of various elements of the Project Network to be described in sufficient detail for comparison with other parts, whilst defining the function (primary or secondary) the element has within the Project Network context.