THE Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs this week denied that there was any immediate threat to funding for the South Devon Area of Out-standing Natural Beauty.

This comes after South Hams councillor Paul Coulson was quoted in last week's Gazette as saying that AONB was being included in the council's cost-cutting exercise, known as T18.

He said DEFRA was pulling out of funding from the AONB, leaving a £128,000 hole for the county and district councils to fill. But, a spokesman for the department said: 'This is totally untrue. I can categorically say that we are not pulling the funding from the AONB and we have the funding for 2015/16 already.'

Cllr Rosemary Rowe is acting chairman of South Devon AONB Partnership Committee that includes representatives from local authorities, organisation such as the Nati-onal Trust, English Heritage and the Envir-onment Agency.

Responding to last week's article, she said: 'The Minister, Lord De Mauley recently reaffirmed DEFRA's commitment at the National Association for AONBs annual conference.

But, she added that DEFRA had decided not to be part of a new Memorandum of Agreement, MoA, from April 2015.

She said: 'This does not affect the level of funding. It does mean that DEFRA will no longer take a share of any potential redundancy costs for AONB staff units'.

She added that a new MoA currently being prepared, anticipates making Devon County Council and South Hams Council jointly responsible for meeting any such future costs.

Cllr Rowe said: 'The South Hams Council Executive Committee resolved on October 23 to complete a 'T18 analysis' of the current activity of the South Devon AONB team for consideration as part of the review of future options being conducted by the AONB Partnership Committee.

'This does not represent a standalone procedure but one that will be considered as part of a wide ranging review to look at ensuring the most appropriate delivery model for 2016-17 onwards.'