Sourcing funding for environmental projects

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Through the Farming in Protected Landscapes programme (FiPL), farmers and land managers can get funding to deliver projects that support and improve National Landscapes (formerly Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty), National Parks and the Broads. Lantern worked alongside Petra Billings (Sussex Woodlands) and Shaun Page to support three Facilitation Fund Groups (funded groups comprising landowners, farmers, charities and local authorities) in scoping and writing bids to the FiPL fund.

 

Lantern, Shaun and Petra facilitated workshops, training and knowledge sharing with each Facilitation Fund group (West Surrey Greensands, Greenscape and North Downs) on subjects relating to priority habitats, priority species, arable plant assemblage, water, woodland management and creation, landscape and climate change. Working through the training sessions Lantern helped the groups to identify fundable projects.

 

Once the workshops and follow up project shortlisting was completed, Lantern led the preparation of four successful bids across the three groups. The projects addressed two priority topics: (1) hedgerow and hedgerow tree planting, and (2) wildlife houses and monitoring. The ‘Hedgerows & connectivity’ bids involved 13 landholdings and created 12km of new hedgerows, with hedgerow trees and fencing also included. The wildlife houses bid involved 25 landholdings and provided over 300 new nest boxes for species including owls, tits, dormice, kingfishers, swifts, robins, house martins, kestrels and treecreepers. Cameras and dormouse footprint tunnels were also installed to help identify the presence of dormice, deer and badgers. The projects were implemented between January 2022 and March 2023.

 

Total project funding secured for the Facilitation Fund groups from FiPL was over £280,000.

 

Based on the success of these applications to the FiPL fund, Lantern has facilitated further discussions for scoped new proposals covering meadow restoration, pond restoration and creation, water voles and access to submitted as future bids.