Action to support 2,500 jobs, plant almost a million trees and boost nature recovery across the country has been stepped up today (Wednesday 28 July) with 90 innovative projects set to receive money through the Government’s £80 million Green Recovery Challenge Fund.

The projects, which will receive a share of £40 million, will span over 600 sites from North Northumberland to the tip of Cornwall, and will range from new ‘insect pathways’ in our countryside and towns, to tree planting projects in deprived urban areas – contributing towards the Government’s commitment to treble tree planting rates across England by the end of this Parliament.

The winning projects include:

• Bringing the Buzz Back to the City – To protect our precious pollinators, Urban Green Newcastle and Northumberland Wildlife Trust are being awarded £697,800 to create a network of 45 nectar-rich public sites, aiming to plant 2,500 trees, 25,000 bulbs and creating 18 hectares of grassland. The work will target young people, with traineeships available including for young offenders, alongside volunteering, and schools work opportunities.

• Trees for Cities – Bringing nature to communities that need it most, Trees for Cities is being awarded £1,229,600 to increase tree cover in deprived urban areas. 55,000 trees will be planted across 83 coastal locations in 7 coastal towns. The project will also increase skills and training opportunities for young people aged 16-24 years.

• Avalon Marshes Wetland Wonderland – Somerset Wildlife Trust in partnership with RSPB, is receiving £906,700 to support the ‘Avalon Marshes Wetland Wonderland’ project to improve wetland habitats, water quality and hydrological connectivity on our nature reserves, which will benefit a whole range of wildlife including waders, wildfowl, eels, rare insects alongside wetland specialist plants. The project will also begin to restore a 10.6 acre site previously used for peat extraction. With a new hide, onsite and digital interpretation, trails and citizen science events, the partners will remove barriers and seek to engage a wider, more diverse audience with nature.

• More from Trees – To boost nature recovery and connect more people to nature in Merseyside and Cheshire, the Mersey Forest, through Community Forest Trust, is receiving £1,326,700 to deliver its Community Forest programme. The programme will improve biodiversity by creating new green corridors in Liverpool city centre, develop a specialist tree nursery for native species, improve habitats for a range of species, and deploy natural flood management in two catchments in Cheshire. The project will also create a new green taskforce of retrained military veterans, and offer a range of nature-based activities to improve the health and well-being of local people.

• Chester Zoo Nature Recovery Corridor – Chester Zoo is being awarded £990,500 to create a 6.5 mile nature recovery corridor, covering restoration of wetlands, traditional orchards, hedgerows, grasslands and wildflower meadows in local wildlife sites. The project will be delivered to address demographic inequalities in peoples access to nature by targeting 12,000 people from deprived areas, and providing opportunities for youth trainees and community volunteer schemes.

Today’s announcement follows a successful first round of funding where almost £40 million was awarded to 69 projects. This round saw over 800,000 trees planted, alongside wider conservation work and the restoration of protected landscapes and damaged habitats such as moorlands, wetlands and forests. Combined with the first round, the fund is on track to support over 2,500 jobs.

Speaking from B-Lines, a Buglife project which has been awarded just over £170,000, Environment Minister Rebecca Pow said:

The diverse and ambitious projects being awarded funding today will help environmental organisations employ more people to work on tree-planting, nature restoration and crucially, help more of the public to access and enjoy the outdoors.

Through our £80 million Fund, we are on track to support over 2,500 jobs, plant almost a million trees and increase nature recovery at a huge scale across the country, which will help us deliver against our 25 Year Environment Plan.

The fund is delivered by the National Lottery Heritage Fund in partnership with Natural England, the Environment Agency and the Forestry Commission.

Ros Kerslake, Chief Executive, National Lottery Heritage Fund, said:

From wetland restoration, to creating wildlife-rich habitat for bees, it is vital that we value, protect and rebuild our natural heritage. This new funding will not only allow projects to carry out direct conservation which is essential in protecting our biodiversity, but it will increase awareness of how and why we need to change our behaviours in order to protect our future.

Natural England Chair Tony Juniper said:

Our environmental and conservation charity sector does an incredible job in protecting, improving and restoring the natural environment for the benefit of communities and the economy.

Having begun my environmental career back in 1984 working on a government-funded project comparable to those being announced today, I know from experience how this fund will be able to help a new generation of passionate young environmentalists take the first few steps in their careers. I can think of fewer more important investments in our future than that.

Emma Howard Boyd, Chair of the Environment Agency, said:

By supporting jobs from Northumberland to Somerset, the Green Recovery Challenge Fund will help deliver a nature positive future. The fund supports young people to develop skills needed to protect nature, build back greener and prepare for climate impacts, like floods and heatwaves.

Forestry Commission Chair Sir William Worsley said:

This funding will help deliver thousands more trees and help us achieve our target of trebling tree planting rates in England by the end of the Parliament. We need to work towards net zero emissions by 2050; to address biodiversity loss; to better connect people with nature; and to create more green jobs in doing so. Trees are central to this and the projects being awarded these grants will have a hugely important role in helping us realise these objectives.

The fund is supporting a range of nature conservation and recovery and nature-based solutions projects, which will contribute towards the Government’s wider 25 Year Environment Plan commitments, including commitments to treble tree-planting rates in England by the end of this Parliament and restoring 35,000 hectares of peat.

Last week a Government-backed scheme to provide temporary, basic accommodation to prison leavers launched as part of efforts to cut crime and homelessness. With prison leavers without a stable home around 50 per cent more likely to reoffend, over 140 councils across England have also today been awarded a share of more than £13 million to help find longer-term accommodation.

The aim is to cut crime by reducing the number of prison leavers ending up homeless so that they have the foundation to get a job and access treatment for addictions.

Around 80 per cent of those receiving cautions or convictions have offended before, so the Beating Crime Plan also unveils a range of work to get more prison leavers to turn their backs on crime for good by securing employment and entering into treatment.

Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland said:

The combination of strong supervision from probation staff and support into treatment, a home and a job will drive down crime. It gives offenders the incentive and opportunity to break the cycle of repeat offending and will save thousands of law-abiding people from becoming victims.

The Lord Chancellor will host a summit with leading employers in October to encourage more businesses to hire prison leavers who are determined to leave crime behind and the Government is leading the way with plans to recruit at least 1,000 ex-offenders who have fully turned their back on crime into the Civil Service by the end of 2023. Employment is known to cut reoffending rates by up to nine percentage points, with a job providing former offenders with the financial means and incentive to continue leading a crime-free life.

The Government is spending £750 million to tackle rough sleeping this year and this new funding for councils will pay for a range of initiatives specifically tailored to help prison leavers move away from crime, drugs, and living on the streets and into private rented accommodation. This includes landlord incentives and loans for rent deposits, specialised insurance and dedicated staff working with prison leavers to maintain their tenancy long-term.

Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick said:

This Government is making huge progress in our mission to end rough sleeping, with a 43% reduction since the Prime Minister came into office and an internationally recognised approach to protecting rough sleepers during the pandemic. We are building on this by working across Government to tackle the underlying causes, backed by £750 million funding this year alone.

By supporting offenders into their own accommodation and keeping them off the streets they’ll have a better chance of turning their lives around – reducing reoffending and making our communities safer.

Accommodation will provide the stable base many with drug or alcohol issues need to engage with treatment services and stay clean and sober. An extra £80 million will expand drug rehab services in England – the biggest increase in investment in 15 years – so that another 5,000 offenders can receive treatment. Offenders who have engaged in treatment go on to commit 33% fewer crimes than they did previously. 

This support will be underpinned with strict supervision from the newly-unified Probation Service which recruited a record 1,000 trainee probation officers last year and is recruiting another 1,500 this year. The Government is also increasing the use of electronic monitoring, with plans to use alcohol monitoring tags on prison leavers in Wales initially and extend the GPS tagging of robbers, burglars and thieves to a further 13 police forces this autumn.

The Government also yesterday (27 July 2021) committed to publishing a Drugs Strategy later this year to crack down on recreational drug use. This includes appointing Dame Carol Black as an ongoing adviser on drug misuse and investing an extra £31m to expand Project ADDER – which combines tough law enforcement with increased provision of treatment and recovery services. This support will be targeted towards a further eight local authorities hardest hit by drugs.

Notes to editors:

• The accommodation scheme began last week in an initial five of twelve Probation Service regions: Yorkshire & Humber, Greater Manchester, the North West, the East of England and Kent, Surrey and Sussex.
• The further police forces areas where robbers, burglars and thieves sentenced to at least 12 months in custody will be GPS-tagged on release from prison on licence are: Bedfordshire, the City of London, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, the Metropolitan Police, North Wales, Nottinghamshire and Sussex. This expansion in the Autumn will take the project’s coverage to half the country, enabling a robust control study of the effect of GPS tagging on reoffending to take place.

Homes and businesses in Bewdley affected by devastating flooding during Storm Christoph in January 2021 are to be better protected with a £6.2m permanent defence, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has announced today (Tuesday 27 July).

Flooding Minister Rebecca Pow will visit Beales Corner to announce the scheme, which would replace temporary flood barriers and better protect around 31 homes and over 150 jobs from flooding once completed. 

A further £4.5m will be invested in smaller projects within the Severn Valley to help tackle flooding in the long term, using natural flood management techniques such as floodplain reconnection, wetland creation, woody debris dams and woodland planting to ‘slow the flow’ of water upstream of Shrewsbury. 

Flooding Minister Rebecca Pow said: 

Flooding is a devastating experience as people in Bewdley know only too well.

The new Beales Corner scheme, combined with flood alleviation projects further up the Severn Valley, will help significantly reduce the risk of flooding in this area in future.

It’s just one part of our wider action on flooding supported by our commitment of a record-breaking £5.2 billion across England between now and 2027, to better protect hundreds of thousands more homes.

Emma Howard Boyd, Chair of the Environment Agency, said: 

I know from meeting members of the community in Bewdley that flooding here is a constant worry.

The Environment Agency has made progress in tackling flooding in the Severn Valley and a permanent defence at Beales Corner, as well as schemes further upstream to slow water flow, will help better protect homes and businesses.

But, with climate change bringing more extreme weather, people need to be vigilant. I strongly urge people to sign up for flood warnings and regularly check flood risk on gov.uk.  

Up to £10m will also be used to support the development of the Severn Valley Water Management scheme. This is a programme of measures and interventions across the upper Severn catchment to manage water and reduce flood risk to communities in the Severn Valley. It will identify a mixture of wide-scale land use change, nature-based interventions and engineered solutions, working with landowners and partners across the catchment.

Funding for this scheme is being made available through the Government’s £170m economic recovery funding package, announced last year, aimed at accelerating work on shovel-ready flood defence schemes across England.

The investment is in addition to the delivery of the Government’s record £5.2 billion programme to build around 2,000 new flood and coastal defences across England by 2027, with Defra and the Environment Agency set to announce more details on its six-year investment plan for England in the coming days.

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