Revenue grants from £250,000 to £1 million are available to UK not-for-profit agencies and partnerships, including local authorities, for initiatives that improve the quality of and access to historic parks and urban green spaces in UK towns and cities. Projects should also develop new ways of engaging local communities and means of generating greater investment.
The programme is looking to support projects focused on capacity building that will enable local authorities and their partners to put public green spaces such as parks, linear walks, nature sites and community gardens at the heart of their thinking to realise the benefits for health, prosperity, heritage, nature and local pride.
Projects should be designed to meet the following objectives by 2028:
- Co-create with communities and partners ambitious green space strategies and improvement plans.
- Create strong and diverse partnerships between local communities, businesses, and local authorities that focus on the role of urban green and blue space in delivering better outcomes for health, wellbeing, heritage, transport, planning, and nature.
- Develop implementation plans that will transform the way public green spaces are utilised, managed, and funded for the benefit of people and nature. This should include developing costed project plans and exploring how to unlock investment from a wide range of investors and funders beyond just the National Lottery, and
- Place access to nature recovery at the heart of local placemaking so that its benefits can be realised for health, prosperity, nature, heritage, and local pride.
Projects should:
- Focus on all the public urban green and blue spaces in an entire area.
- Set out how it will lead to ambitious change and will deliver against the desired outcomes to ensure green space provides more for people and places.
- Show how a cross-disciplinary team and partnership working will ensure breadth in the group’s thinking and active working across the heritage, planning, transport, health, community, and nature sectors.
- Identify what resources are needed in order to:
- Design new financial models.
- Develop new strategic partnerships.
- Engage local communities.
- Establish new bodies such as a foundation or trust, and
- Unlock new investment.
Expressions of Interest can be submitted until 12 noon on Tuesday 12 November 2024. Full applications for those successful will then need to be submitted between Monday 16 December 2024 and Friday 7 March 2025.
Further information, guidance and details about how to submit an Expression of Interest can be found on the National Lottery Heritage Fund website.