Heritage Lottery Fund and National Trust launch green spaces fund
The National
Lottery funding body, the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), and the
National Trust have joined forces. They will find and back ambitious and
sustainable solutions to protect and enhance public parks with a
green spaces fund.
The Future Parks Accelerator
(FPA) is a UK-wide £10m strategic initiative to enable up to eight
local authorities and communities to develop and
implement bold and innovative funding and management
solutions for all their green spaces across their place, against a
challenging backdrop of financial
uncertainty.
The scheme is now open
for Expressions of Interest. Applications close at
12pm
on
19 November
2018.
How will it work?
The FPA will support places to
grow the contribution parks make to civic life whilst
becoming financially
sustainable. It will involve discovering how parks and
green spaces could be better used. It will also involve managed and funded to
serve community needs and aspirations now and over the next
generation.
With grant funding and
support from a team of experts, the places chosen to be FPA
pioneers will work as a cohort to:
-
Catalyse and share innovation
-
Learn rapidly together
-
Build their capacity to lead for ambitious change both in their place and to benefit the rest of the UK
It will encourage new partnerships
whilst supporting the role of local authorities with green
spaces. It will
promote an holistic approach. This ensures that all parks and green
spaces in an area receive protection and enhancement to deliver
quality and fair access to green
spaces. For
free, for everyone.
The initiative will run over
two years
and combine
£5m in HLF grant funding with £5m in value of National Trust
expertise. It opens for expressions of interest today, with a
deadline of midday,
Monday 19 November. Several places will then receive an invitation to submit a
full application later this year with decisions on which places
will receive support made in February
2019.
Leaders committed to enabling positive change
Ros Kerslake, HLF's CEO said:
"Our ambition is
simple. We want to grow and secure the future of our public parks.
This is so generations in times to come will have access to the
wide range of benefits they provide.
There are big
challenges facing parks but equally big opportunities. This strategic initiative will help everyone
invested in parks to take action and find new ways to ensure they
have safeguarding. This is so they are able to fulfil their potential to
deliver health and wellbeing. These insights stem from over £950m of
National Lottery investment in 900 park projects over 20
years. It is
also from our recent combined investment of over £3m in parks
innovation.'
Hilary McGrady, director-general of National Trust said:
"The National Trust began in the
19th century to protect urban green space from development for
everyone to enjoy. Those founding principles remain as relevant today as public
parks. Green spaces are again under significant pressure, this time
from budget cuts.
"That's why we have strong
committment to offering our expertise and experience to help
councils and communities. This is to
find long-term solutions which will not only safeguard their public
green spaces, but allow them to thrive. There's no one size fits all approach and
different places will have different opportunities and
challenges. We look forward to
working with ambitious local authorities to find a way to look
after these wonderful places. They bring millions of people together to
enjoy nature, the outdoors and a sense of freedom."
Article Tags:
Parks