21. Memorandum submitted by
English Nature
REFORM OF THE NATIONAL LOTTERY
INTRODUCTION
English Nature is the statutory body that champions
the conservation and enhancement of the wildlife and natural features
of England. We work for wildlife in partnership with others, by:
— advising: Government, other agencies,
local authorities, interest groups, business, communities, individuals
on nature conservation in England;
— regulating: activities affecting
the special nature conservation sites in England;
— enabling: others to manage land for
nature conservation, through grants, projects and information;
and
— enthusing: advocating nature conservation
for all and biodiversity as a key test of sustainable development.
We have statutory responsibilities for nationally
important nature conservation sites: Sites of Special Scientific
Interest, the most important of which are managed as National
Nature Reserves.
Through the Joint Nature Conservation Committee,
English Nature works with sister organisations in Scotland, Wales
and Northern Ireland to advise Government on UK and international
nature conservation issues.
SUMMARY
English Nature welcomes this opportunity to
submit evidence to the CMS Committee inquiry into the reform of
the National Lottery. As the Government's wildlife champion and
lead adviser of nature conservation we are uniquely placed to
advise on the continued integration of the natural environment
into Lottery distribution policy. To this end we have participated
fully in the 2002 Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)
consultation process. We were pleased to note that many of our
recommendations to simplify application procedures and encourage
wider access to lottery funds were reflected in the Department's
Decision document, issued last autumn. English Nature has no comments
to make on the questions regarding the licensing and regulation
of the National Lottery and will instead concentrate on key questions
surrounding National Lottery Distribution and Funding.
FOCUS OF
THE NATIONAL
LOTTERY
The environment is one of the designated good
causes that may receive funds from lottery distributors. In the
main, the two distributors that have funded environmental projects
have been the New Opportunities Fund (NOF) and the Heritage Lottery
Fund (HLF) which recognises natural heritage assets as one of
the key elements of the UK's heritage. English Nature would like
to offer our full support for the contribution that lottery funding
has made to environmental good causes to date but must highlight
the fact that the environment remains the poor relation in terms
of funding shared between the lottery designated "good causes",
receiving proportionately much less than the arts, charities,
millennium, sports, health or education[32].
The environment sector has benefited from accessing
a range of available awards from small to extremely significant
sums of funding. Much can be achieved by harnessing the expertise
and skills of the statutory agencies and reaching out into communities
where the interest in the environment and the wildlife that surrounds
them is reaching new heights. English Nature was chosen as an
award partner by NOF and we are delighted with the success of
our Wildspace! grant scheme, which helps communities to develop
their local nature reserves. There has been an impressive level
of community interest and participation with 90 community based
projects funded in its first year. As a direct result, many local
people have embraced a renewed sense of commitment to these green
spaces on their doorsteps, often through accessing relatively
small sums of money. The great challenge is to sustain the important
and often difficult capacity building that these projects have
brokered into the future to ensure long term quality of life benefits.
On a larger scale, transformational schemes
can galvanise whole areas of the country and create a really visionary
impact. English Nature leads the Mineral Valleys Partnership,
a large-scale environment led £5.2 million project to regenerate
a significant part of the deprived Wear Valley in County Durham.
By the end of this ambitious five year project many social and
economic gains will have become evident, achieved on the back
of the largely natural heritage driven agenda of the project.
This project levered in over £2 million of essential funding
from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
THE NEW
DISTRIBUTOR
English Nature welcomes the merging of the Community
Fund and the New Opportunities Fund to create a new distributor
and strongly supports its three key themes as outlined by DCMS:
streamlined and accessible funding for communities; provision
of big transformational funding and promoting innovation. The
ability to handle both public and non-lottery funds will greatly
aid the new distributor in the development of wide-reaching joined-up
schemes where funding streams can combine to achieve far more
than just the sum of their parts. The importance of the link between
the natural environment and quality of life is increasingly recognised
by government, both nationally and internationally. Lottery investment
in projects linking people to the natural environment will enhance
the quality of life of individuals in the UK. English Nature would
like to see lottery investment in such projects increase in a
targeted way and to see lottery distributors build on the growing
recognition of the economic and social benefits of large-scale
environment led regeneration or restoration projects.
For example, English Nature manages the HLF-funded
Tomorrow's Heathland Heritage (THH) programme. This takes forward
the Lowland Heathland Biodiversity Action Plan. More than 145
partners working on 25 projects aim to deliver in excess of 70%
of the habitat restoration target (more than 42,000 hectares).
A key tenet of the programme is to maximise public access and
stimulate community involvement in these special landscapes. THH
has demonstrated the importance and benefits of developing strong
partnerships at strategic level. There is plenty of scope for
Lottery boards to work in partnership with key organisations within
the environment sector to develop and deliver such flagship transformational
projects.
Another innovative approach that seeks to maximise
the social and economic benefits of environment led regeneration
has been developed in partnership with the North West Regional
Development Agency (RDA). In a determined attempt to embed sustainable
development principles into all projects, key English Nature staff
worked in concert with the RDA to create a set of indicators and
assessment measures to accurately gauge the social, economic and
environmental outputs of projects submitted for consideration
for RDA funding. It is hoped that the new distributor will seek
to follow a similar approach when identifying assessment criteria
for the proposed funding stream for large-scale transformational
capital projects.
The proposed centre of excellence should aim
to capitalise on existing knowledge and experience by drawing
together key project managers and practitioners to influence and
develop protocols and consistent procedures that will help others
as they develop and plan these large-scale endeavours. A mentoring
system may also prove a useful tool for project managers and help
to encourage cross-fertilisation of ideas and best practice approaches
to problem-solving.
COMMUNITY CAPACITY
BUILDING
The Committee is right to highlight the very
real need to assist communities to develop robust projects to
access lottery funds and develop a greater depth of awareness
and understanding of the complexities of attracting match funding.
The Heritage Lottery Fund put in place a regional structure that
allowed its staff to focus their efforts of specific communities
or areas that had struggled to access lottery funds. This approach
appears to have paid real dividends in terms of the amount of
projects coming forward. The award partner approach utilised by
the New Opportunities Fund has also been very successful as it
has played to the strengths of existing networks and allowed new
groups to build on the strong foundations of guidance offered
by statutory agencies and local authorities.
English Nature is committed to increasing community
involvement with the natural environment by exploring how to increase
access to nature and different ways for people to get involved,
particularly those too often excluded because of financial, physical
or cultural barriers. The Wildspace! Grant scheme has demonstrated
that community green space can play a vital role in enhancing
people's quality of life whether in an urban or rural area. For
the lottery distributors it offers another avenue to act at a
local level to encourage and enable local communities to contribute
to improving their own living and working space. Their challenge
now is to continue the momentum of the achievements gained to
date by NOF's Green Spaces and Sustainable Communities programme
and the HLF's Public Parks initiative and to work closer together
to disseminate good practice and learn the lessons of past projects.
There are currently a plethora of organisations with an interest
in community green space issues and English Nature sees a need
for greater cooperation between all these organisations to widen
the scope of what could be achieved across the country. To this
end we would like the new distributor to:
— Build on the good work already in
place by facilitating the exchange of knowledge of what has worked
and why and work with English Nature to facilitate discussions
at both national and regional levels to bring about greater cohesion
and assist in the development and implementation of new initiatives,
perhaps on a regional scale.
— Develop a shared understanding of
the very real challenges and obstacles to greater community access
and involvement in local green spaces. Provide more opportunities
for people to enjoy and experience their local environment in
a way that is appropriate to their needs and their cultures.
— Provide a seamless public face across
lottery distributors to make it easier for applicants and especially
community groups to access the right funds for their community
green space projects. The new distributor is ideally placed to
lead on co-ordination of cross distributor funding for community
green space aiming to work with others at Departmental and regional
levels to identify local needs and priorities.
January 2004
32 In the New Opportunities Fund (where environment
is one of three funding areas), the environment has attracted
approximately 7% of available funding. In the Heritage Lottery
Fund, the environment has attracted approximately 19% of available
funding. (NOF Website July 2002, HLF 2001, Horizons of Heritage). Back
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