The National Lottery Heritage Fund: Nature Towns and Cities Programme

The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s new strategic initiative, Nature Towns and Cities, aims to enable 100 places across the UK to transform access to green space in urban areas and bring nature closer to home for everyone all to enjoy.

As part of the initiative, the funder has committed £15 million to support local authorities and community partners across the UK. There will be a single round of funding with grants available from £250,000 up to £1 million over 3 years.

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.