The Government has this morning given the go-ahead today for a new National Park in the South Downs, which will include part of the Hampshire countryside.

It has been more than 60 years since the area of Hampshire and Sussex was recommended as a National Park, and a decade since the Government first announced its intention to designate it as such.

But designation of the South Downs, a tract of countryside between Winchester and Eastbourne of rolling chalk uplands, river valleys and wooded greens, has been held up by a public inquiry and legal wrangling which has lasted for years.

Today Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said a National Park covering an area of 627 square miles and home to around 120,000 people, would get the go-ahead.

A new South Downs National Park Authority is expected to be established by April 2010 and become fully operational a year later.