Open for Expressions of Interest: £10m ‘Future Parks Accelerator’ initiative to secure future of urban parks & greenspaces

The National Lottery funding body, the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), and the National Trust have joined forces to find and back ambitious and sustainable solutions to protect and enhance public parks and greenspaces.

The Future Parks Accelerator (FPA) is a UK-wide £10 million strategic initiative to enable up to eight local authorities and communities to develop and implement bold and innovative funding and management solutions for all their green spaces across their place, against a challenging backdrop of financial uncertainty.

How it will work

The FPA will support places to grow the contribution parks make to civic life whilst becoming financially sustainable. It will involve discovering how parks and greenspaces could be better used, managed and funded to serve community needs and aspirations now and over the next generation.

 With grant funding and support from a team of experts, the places chosen to be FPA pioneers will work as a cohort to catalyse and share innovation, learn rapidly together and build their capacity to lead for ambitious change both in their place and to benefit the rest of the UK.  It will encourage new partnerships whilst supporting the role of local authorities as vital owners, funders and co-managers of green spaces. It will promote an holistic approach, ensuring that all parks and green spaces in an area are protected and enhanced to deliver quality and fair access to greenspaces for free for everyone. 

The initiative will run over two years and combine £5m in HLF grant funding with £5m in value of National Trust expertise. It opens for expressions of interest today, with a deadline of midday Monday 19^th November.  A number of places will then be invited to submit a full application later this year with decisions on which places will receive support made in February 2019.

More information on Future Parks Accelerator