Brownfield regeneration project in the North West to create city parks and green space

A programme billed as ‘land regeneration for the 21st century is set to become one of the largest in the country, as a total investment of over £59 million pounds is announced by the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA).

The NWDA and the Forestry Commission (FC) re-affirmed their five-year-long partnership with the announcement of an additional £36 million for the ‘Newlands’ programme, which was launched with an investment of more than £23 million in 2003. Newlands – which stands for New Economic Environments through Woodlands – is working to regenerate into community woodland more than 900 hectares of brownfield land across the Northwest region, encouraging economic growth and simultaneously creating new opportunities for leisure and recreation.

The NWDA has committed more than four million pounds of regeneration funding to create and manage the largest Newlands project yet – LIVIA in Salford, Greater Manchester. This 97-hectare project has received £4.7 million to transform it into one of Europe’s largest City Parks – with enhanced access routes, sculpture trails, outdoor classrooms, informal play areas and a mountain bike course.

The LIVIA project, which is being developed and managed by the Forestry Commission, will give a huge boost to the area - attracting business investment to local economic centres, enhancing an HMR and NDC area and, in time, increasing commercial and residential land values.

Work on site  is expected to be completed by 2009.

Newlands has to-date been working to deliver regeneration on sites across the Mersey Belt, and this additional funding will allow the programme to expand to cover the entire North West region. 

Carefully planned and intelligence-led, Newlands is developing multi-purpose community woodlands on some of the region’s most scarred landscapes. The community woodlands already delivered through Newlands are providing sustainable solutions to damaged land through new recreational and amenity areas. Vitally, they are also improving the image of England's Northwest and enhancing the appearance of the main transport corridors into the region, with woodlands used to screen off eyesores and industrial plants.

Using aerial photography, the National Land Use Database and/or Unitary Development Plans, the DUN Survey, which formed the basis for the selection of Newlands sites, found an astonishing 3,800 DUN sites of more than one hectare across the Northwest. Of this amount, 1,600 were highlighted as a brownfield sites.

The Public Benefit Recording System (PBRS) uses a range of social, economic and environmental factors from proximity to a transport corridor or Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) to a sites location to schools. It has won widespread approval across wider government and has already been used to tackle a number of other regeneration or development challenges.

Newlands, which was launched in 2003 by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott MP, has already delivered impressively across five sites in Merseyside and Greater Manchester  - with two sites completely transformed, and local businesses and communities already reaping the benefits.

One of these sites, Moston Vale in Harpurhey, Manchester (an area in the top 5 per cent of the Index of Multiple Deprivation), received £1.7million in August 2005.  Its development, including the remediation and re-landscaping of the former landfill site, the creation of extensive solar powered floodlit pathways, woodland areas, and sports facilities is intended to drive significant added investment to the area; enhancing the adjacent Central Park Business Park and adding value to the local Housing Marketing Renewal area.

Bidston Moss has also been transformed as part of the Newlands scheme.  More than £2.7m has been committed to the revamp of the Wirral site by the NWDA and partners including Biffaward; an environment fund that is paying for new sporting and recreational facilities at the site. Groundwork Wirral is also running a three-year programme of community events (assisted by the Landfill Communities Fund) to help maintain and improve the site while encouraging local use. The Wirral site’s reinvention as a community woodland is being helped by a pioneering commitment to recycling – pathways, fishing lodge boardwalks and even the soil which covers the site have all come from recycled materials.

Plans for the expansion of Newlands into Cheshire, Cumbria and Lancashire will take the experiences of delivering the programme within the Mersey Belt, and continue to develop projects that will have maximum impact on the regional economy, as well as environment.  Work will now start to select the sites to be developed under Newlands in these areas.

As well as enabling the regeneration of an additional 520ha of brownfield land, this latest NWDA funding will allow Newlands to also develop a programme of street greening (including street tree planting, and other urban greening projects) around all of the Newlands sites.  Newlands also provides enough resources to keep the project sites maintained for the 15 years after initial development, and the Forestry Commission enters into management contracts for all projects to maintain the sites for 99 years.

Newlands is delivered at a local level through five main local delivery partners: Red Rose Forest, The Mersey Forest, Pennine Edge Forest, Groundwork Northwest, Land Restoration Trust and Forest Commission.