Author: Ashleigh Carter

Dunston Activity Centre is a vibrant centre at the heart of the community of Dunston, offering a space for people to meet, socialise, exercise and learn new skills.

Although the centre is well used, unfortunately it has often has to turn new groups away due to a lack of available space.

Thanks to a funding from Biffa Award, as part of the Landfill Communities Fund, it can now create a third community room, opening up more opportunities for the community and accommodating new groups and activities.

As well as hosting a fully fitted gym and library, the centre is also used by a whole range of community groups including a companion group, exercise classes, martial arts groups, preschool activities, slimming groups, baby ballet and NHS cardio rehabilitation, blood donation and diabetes groups.

Edmund Nichols, Chair of Trustees:

“With the generous support of Biffa Award our local community will benefit greatly from the creation of a new community room at Dunston Activity Centre. We can now meet the demand for quality accommodation for new activities and community groups of all ages.”

Brenda Clelland, Ward Councillor for Dunston and the Teams:

“I’m absolutely delighted to hear that Biffa Award has so kindly funded the creation of a new, useful community room. The creation of this room is a much-needed increase in space available and will help Dunston Activity Centre to remain at the heart of the local community, doing what it does best – helping local people stay physically fit and healthy, and offering activities and creative opportunities to nurture and support their mental health and wellbeing. The whole community will join me in saying a big thank you to Biffa Award.”

Rachel Maidment, Biffa Award Grants Manager:

“It is so important that we keep investing in community buildings which provide a space for people to meet, socialise and learn new skills. It is great to have been able to fund the new community space at Dunston Activity Centre, enabling even more people to use this vital facility.”

The Woodland Trust Northern Ireland today has announced it has acquired new land in the Belfast Hills. Thanks to funding from Biffa Award and NIEA, the UK’s largest woodland conservation charity has taken ownership of 98 hectares next to Cave Hill Country Park, with plans to conserve and restore the site. The charity plans to open the woodland to the public for free, once works are completed on site.

Northern Ireland currently has the lowest tree cover within Europe, with just 8% cover; of which 4% are native trees and 0.04% is ancient woodland. The Woodland Trust aims to create new native woodland for wildlife, people and the climate. Biffa Award is a multi-million-pound fund that helps to build communities and transform lives by awarding grants to communities and environmental projects across the UK.

Ian McCurley, Director of Woodland Trust Northern Ireland:

“We want to thank Biffa Award who have donated £550,000 and NIEA who have funded £50,000 allowing the Woodland Trust to purchase the land in Belfast Hills. This is an incredible investment, and we are excited about the opportunity to create a new native woodland within a short drive of the population of greater Belfast, Newtownabbey and South Antrim.
“To be able to create woodlands on this scale means more for nature, more for climate change and more for people. We need to rapidly increase tree cover to help reach net zero carbon emissions and tackle the declines in wildlife. We want to conserve the land in the Belfast Hills and restore it to a beautiful habitat for people and nature.”

Rachel Maidment: Biffa Award Grants Manager:

“Biffa Award is extremely privileged to be able to support the Woodland Trust Northern Ireland’s project to purchase 247 acres of land at Cavehill Wood to support woodland creation, improve existing habitats and create new habitats. It is hugely important that Biffa Award continues to fund projects which seek to restore, protect and enhance habitats for a wide range of wildlife. Through our Partnership Grants Scheme we are able to make significant grants to projects that introduce, conserve or protect our wildlife, paving the way for nature’s recovery on a large scale.”

The new site borders Cave Hill Country Park, which attracts over 270,000 visitors every year from Belfast and the surrounding areas and will link existing pathways through Divis and the Belfast Hills. It will also be the final piece of the jigsaw linking current Woodland Trust sites at Carnmoney Hill, Monkstown Wood and Throne Wood, providing free outdoor spaces for the local community in North Belfast, Newtownabbey, South Antrim and the greater Belfast area.

The news comes after the charity committed to planting 50 million more trees in the UK by 2025 to help tackle climate change.

Millions of mini-beasts in South Devon are set to benefit from improvements to their nature reserve homes after local charity, Devon Wildlife Trust, secured a £41,000 grant from Biffa Award; a multi-million pound fund that helps to build communities and transform lives through awarding grants to community and environmental projects across the UK, as part of the Landfill Communities Fund.

The project, which is called Helping Habitats in South Devon’s Invertebrates, is taking a local approach to a national problem: the alarming declines in insect populations. It plans to do this by improving many of the most important places where mini-beasts live, including heathlands, meadows, woodlands and freshwater streams/ponds.

A host of insect species stand to benefit. These include some of the county’s rarest species such as the high-brown fritillary butterfly, Kugelann’s green clock beetle, the narrow-headed ant and the heath-potter wasp. Countless other more common species including moths, damselflies and bumblebees will also prosper.

Eleven of Devon Wildlife Trust’s nature reserves in South Devon and Dartmoor will form the focus of extensive practical work to create better homes for insects. Highlights will include the restoration of wildflower-rich grasslands over more than 30 hectares at Emsworthy Mire, Dart Valley and Blackadon nature reserves (all on Dartmoor), and Chudleigh Knighton Heath, Bovey Heathfield, Dunsford and Wolborough Fen nature reserves (all in South Devon).

At Teigngrace Meadow nature reserve, near Bovey Tracey, 1.5 hectares of woodland will be coppiced with trees being cutback to encourage new growth, while 4.5 hectares of wildflower meadows at the Trust’s Woodah Farm will be restored. At the charity’s Little Bradley Ponds and Lower East Lounston nature reserves the water quality of ponds and streams will be improved with the installation of separate drinking facilities for grazing cattle.

The project is being overseen by Devon Wildlife Trust’s experienced nature reserve team. But local people are also set to play a crucial part with 35 volunteers set to carry out vital conservation tasks including scrub management, wildflower seed spreading and wildlife monitoring.

Matt Boydell leads Devon Wildlife Trust’s nature reserves’ team:

“Support from Biffa Award will have a really positive impact on insects and other wildlife at our nature reserves. It will help us provide the right conditions for beetles, butterflies, dragonflies, ants and others to flourish in. Together the eleven nature reserves will provide a network of sites for mini-beasts to use and move between. This kind of conservation at a landscape scale is vital if we’re to begin to see insects recover in numbers and diversity.”

Rachel Maidment, Biffa Award Grants Manager:

“It is hugely important that Biffa Award continues to fund biodiversity projects like this one by Devon Wildlife Trust which seeks to help reverse the increasing decline of invertebrates at sites across South Devon and beyond. The project will not only benefit some of the county’s rarest species across more than 6 hectares of land, it will also help to pave the way for Nature’s Recovery.”

Scotter War Memorial Playing Fields Committee has secured £123,000 towards a desperately needed brand new play area for the children of the parish. It has come after years of community events, fundraising and volunteering to work out what the children of the parish wanted and how much this would cost.

The play area, which was awarded funding under Biffa Award’s Recreation theme, will aim to create a new Toddler and Junior Children’s Play Area in Scotter, including a fantastic double zip line for older children.

The existing play area is over 25 years old and has made thousands of children happy throughout its life but is now ready to be replaced with new, more exciting play equipment that children of all ages will enjoy for years to come.

Scotter War Memorial Playing Fields Committee have secured £70,000 from Biffa Award; a multi-million-pound fund that helps to build communities and transform lives through awarding grants to community and environmental projects across the UK, as part of the Landfill Communities Fund (LCF).

Members of Scotter War Memorial Playing Fields Committee have been working hard over the past 3 years: – consulting with the local parents and children, designing the new play area based on the most popular views, applying for grants and organising lockdown fundraising events such as the 2020 Scotter Scarecrow competition and the 2020 Scotter Duck Race on the River Eau.

Martin Ely from Scotter War Memorial Playing Fields:

“We are delighted to have finally secured enough money to build our new play area for generations of children to come. We really hope they all enjoy the fantastic new equipment and it brings smiles and laughter to them for years to come”.

Rachel Maidment, Biffa Award Grants Manager:

“At times like this it is more important than ever that we continue to support projects that build our communities, like this new play area for the children of Scotter in Lincolnshire. Hopefully in the not too distant future we will be able to see children enjoying the new facilities.”

Thanks to a grant of over £50,000 from Biffa Award, Boston Spa’s village hall has undergone a transformation.

The tired and dated main foyer and toilets have been totally refurbished. The foyer is now spacious and welcoming and the toilets have been modernised and now include baby changing facilities. The accessible toilet also benefits from updated facilities. We cannot wait to have an official opening and show our lovely community of users, when Government guidelines allow.

Carol Taylor, Chair Boston Spa Village Hall Management Committee:

“The Hall is at the heart of the Boston Spa community and has been in existence since the early 1900s” said C. “Due to budget limitations, the facilities had not been updated for some time, so we are really grateful to Biffa Award for their generous grant. We’re looking forward to welcoming our community back in due course.”

Terry Gaussen, Parish Councillor and local resident:

As a long time village hall user it has been really gratifying to see the completed alterations and renovations to the foyer and toilet facilities. The previously cramped main entrance to the Hall and cafe is now transformed into welcomingly open area which forms a useable extra congregating space, with the added bonus of full wheelchair
accessibility.

“The renewal of the old, dated female and male lavatories, was very necessary and the new layout, fixtures, fittings and decoration is so much better for all hall users, for ease of use and hygiene. The modernisation of the Accessible facilities together with ambulant, baby changing and similar provision was also much needed. So, it is great to see these improvements which are a credit to the Village Hall and will stand it in good stead in future years.”

Rachel Maidment, Biffa Award Grants Manager:

“At Biffa Award we are proud to support projects which are so integral to the life of their community, bringing people together and giving them the opportunity to share experiences. Projects like this provide the means for a community to thrive.”

Wiltshire Wildlife Trust is delighted to announce that, thanks to the generous response of the public to the plight of the endangered marsh fritillary butterfly, a new project to restore this rare species can now go ahead in 2021.

An urgent appeal to raise £49,200 by the end of February, the final amount needed on top of grant funding from Biffa Award in order to secure the purchase of 44 acres of land at Upper Minety, North Wiltshire, was launched late last year. The land is earmarked to provide vital habitat for the rare, but once flourishing, Marsh fritillary butterfly and will quadruple the size of the Trust’s existing wildlife reserve at Emmett Hill.

Donations from many quarters exceeded the fundraising target ahead of schedule in February, helping to unlock £442,941 of further funding from Biffa Award, a multi-million-pound fund that helps to build communities and transform lives by awarding grants to environmental projects across the UK.

This funding will enable the Trust to proceed with the purchase of the site, and this year will see the start of the changes aimed at supporting the butterfly’s long-term recovery – in particular a new management plan to seed devil’s-bit scabious, the butterfly’s chosen food source across the two adjoining sites.

Speaking on behalf of the Trust, Debbie Bentley said: 

“We are absolutely thrilled at the level of public support for this campaign. When we launched the appeal just before Christmas, we weren’t sure if we’d reach our target in these difficult times. We’re so grateful for the concern shown for this butterfly and the generous personal donations that we have received. Our thanks go out to everyone involved, particularly to Biffa Award for recognising the importance of this project”.

Rachel Maidment, Biffa Award Grants Manager added:

“Biffa Award is extremely privileged to be able to support Wiltshire Wildlife Trust’s project to purchase 44.6 acres of land to support the long-term recovery of the rare Marsh fritillary butterfly. It is hugely important that Biffa Award continues to fund projects like this which seek to restore declining species and protect and enhance the habitats that support them. Through our Partnership Grants Scheme we are able to make significant grants to projects that introduce, conserve or protect our wildlife, paving the way for nature’s recovery on a large scale.”

A year-long river restoration project, including volunteer tree planting, has been completed on Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust’s Woodhouse Washland nature reserve. The works will have a huge impact on local wildlife including improving conditions for fish breeding, creating habitat for wading birds and increasing the breeding opportunities for the protected species great crested newt.

With £34,928 of funding provided by Biffa Award, a multi-million-pound fund that helps to build communities and transform lives through awarding grants to communities and environmental projects across the UK, three in-channel berms have been installed in the River Rother to diversify flow in the canalised river, improving habitat for fish breeding making this area more habitable for them.

Additionally, two earth bunds on the floodplain have been created to hold back surface water and create shallow pools in winter and spring for waterfowl and wading birds, such as lapwing and snipe. The riverbanks have been re-graded to prevent erosion and 200 native trees have been planted by volunteers – they will provide food and shelter for breeding birds and will also provide some shading of the river to provide extra resilience against the impacts of climate change.

Project manager, Nabil Abbas from Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust:

“Thanks to funding from Biffa Award, we’ve been able to make big strides towards restoring the River Rother at Woodhouse Washlands. Following canalisation in the 1950s and decades of heavy industry, the river really was on its knees. The river restoration project has allowed us to put back some of the natural features in the river channel and on its floodplain, helping nature’s recovery here on the Rother”.

Over the past year the project has also delivered on the creation of three new ponds for the protected species great crested newt, which already breed on the reserve. In addition to the project having a positive impact on wildlife it has also engaged the local community; installing a new pond dipping platform, running a series of family-friendly wildlife sessions and erecting an information panel for visitors to the nature reserve.

Rachel Maidment, Biffa Award Grants Manager:

“Biffa Award is delighted to be able to support the Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust’s project at Woodhouse Washland nature reserve. The river restoration works that we have funded will go a long way to improve and enhance the habitats and breeding opportunities for a wide range of wildlife including fish and great crested newts. Now more than ever it is extremely important that we support projects like this which promote nature’s recovery.”

Lancashire Wildlife Trust’s Lunt Meadows Nature Reserve on the bank of the river Alt in Sefton is a uniquely wild site and one of the best spots in Merseyside to see wetland wildlife. Over 2021, this special site is on track to become even better, thanks to generous funding from Biffa Award, a multi-million pound fund that helps to build communities and transform lives through awarding grants to communities and environmental projects across the UK.

Lunt is a haven for wetland birds, offering a mixture of reedbeds, grassland and pools. While many birds do already breed on Lunt, the current habitats can be enhanced further. As well as carrying out traditional practical conservation tasks, staff and volunteers do the important job of monitoring the conditions and wildlife at Lunt.

Habitat quality surveys have shown that Lunt’s grasslands and reedbed are currently too dry for species, such as bitterns, found in these habitats. Bird monitoring over the years has revealed that waders on-site, like lapwings and avocets, prefer to roost and breed on raised islands and narrow slopes, but these areas are currently few and far between.

The £54,000 awarded to the Trust from Biffa Award will allow staff and volunteers to carry out considerable habitat improvements across Lunt Meadows. This will include excavating parts of the site, forming scrapes, islands and channels that will both improve water flow and create more desirable breeding conditions for these birds. 4,000 more reeds will be planted too, contributing towards the goal of creating the largest reedbed in Merseyside.

Rachel Maidment, Biffa Award Grants Manager said:

“Biffa Award is delighted to be able to support the Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside’s project at Lunt Meadows. The improvement works that we have funded will go a long way to improve and enhance the habitats for a wide range of species including birds, fish and insects. Now more than ever it is extremely important that we support projects that promote nature’s recovery.”

The team aren’t stopping there though; aquatic plants will be introduced, helping to oxygenate the water and promote aquatic invertebrates and fish stocks, while wetland wildflowers will be sown to create a meadow, attracting a variety of invertebrates, including beetles, which are a favourite and important food of lapwing chicks. On top of this, there are plans to dig out four new ponds with the aim of increasing the breeding dragonfly population on site.

The hope is that these enhancements will bring Lunt Meadows to the qualifying level of a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) for breeding and wintering bird assemblages, as it is already close to meeting the requirements. Given that only 10 years ago Lunt was still farmland, an SSSI designation would be an amazing and well-deserved achievement for the reserve’s volunteers, a group of local people who give several thousand hours of work annually on-site. The team have already been able to purchase seeds and much-needed new tools to get started.