Natural England - Previous news

Previous news

2012

  • December 2012:Access to Nature Newsletter: (1.25mb)pdf document - Issue 2 has been published.

  • October 2012: We are delighted to announce details of the Supporting Change and Impact funding opportunity recently completed on behalf of the Big Lottery Fund (BIG). £1.37m was made available to enable eligible Access to Nature projects to sustain the benefits of their initial funding award.

  • October 2012: A new series of six Findings Papers has been produced by Access to Nature. These papers are being produced across the lifetime of Access to Nature and demonstrate what is being learnt about encouraging people who have little or no experience of the natural environment to go out into the outdoors. In addition to the Early Findings papers, a fourth overall evaluation report is expected at the end of the year.

    Thanks are due to all who continue to evaluate and report on Access to Nature projects. As a result we have been able to gather learning to inform the work of Access to Nature projects and of other organisations interested in similar fields.

    The six titles in this second seriesexternal link are:

    • Changing young lives – Engaging NEET* young people in the natural environment
    • Free to explore – Connecting people with their local urban environment
    • Making partnerships work – Partnerships at the heart of Access to Nature projects
    • New Directions – Organisations using the natural environment for the first time as a medium for working with their established client groups
    • Seeing the wood for the trees – Woodlands as a tool for engaging people with the natural environment
    • The Mosaic model – Engaging BME communities in National Parks

    (*not in education, employment or training)

  • September 2012: The Access to Nature Newsletter issue 1: (675kb)pdf document is now available

  • March 2012: Supporting Change and Supporting Impact Funding - additional funding for existing Access to Nature projects, courtesy of the Big Lottery Fund.

  • On 7 March 2012 Natural England officially opened its application window for applications for existing eligible Access to Nature grant holders. Successful applicants will use the funding to sustain the benefits of their project.

    Eligible projects have been contacted and sent an application form which must be returned by 4pm on the closing date of 28 May 2012. 
      
    Attached are the Guidance Notes for applicants: (110kb)pdf document and a list of Frequently Asked Questions: (152kb)pdf document (FAQs).  The FAQs will be updated regularly with any new questions arising.

    If you have any queries not addressed in the FAQs please contact your Lead Adviser.

  • January 2012: Natural England has been awarded £1.36m of additional funding to help existing eligible Access to Nature projects continue their good work.
     
    The funding comes from Big Lottery Fund’s Supporting Change and Impact initiative which was launched last year.  The money will give existing projects that meet the eligibility criteria – which include being in the last 18 months of their funding from 1 November 2011 - some vital time to review the way they work and explore ways of becoming more sustainable.

    There will be two strands to the funding, ‘Supporting Change’ grants of up to £10,000, and ‘Supporting Impact’ grants, where projects that can show that they are having particularly significant impact will be able to apply for an additional year’s funding.

    Full details and guidance will be available soon on the website.
    Note:  This additional funding is for existing eligible projects, to help them plan for the future in an uncertain economic climate.  The scheme remains closed to new applications.
    We will be contacting our projects with further details, and a short FAQ will be added to the website shortly.   In the meantime, please email any questions you may have to accesstonature@naturalengland.org.uk, so that we can log these for response   when application and guidance materials are complete.

  • January 2012: Work on the Access to Nature programme evaluation is progressing well. Many thanks to all who have contributed. So far three annual overall evaluation reports and two report summaries have been produced, plus four Early Findings learning papers. These reports – and those that will follow – are particularly useful for understanding how the programme and projects are proceeding and the findings feed in to Natural England’s continuous review of the programme and learning for the future.

  • New evaluation reportsexternal link:

    • Executive Summary Evaluation report 2011
    • Evaluation report 2011
    • Evaluation report 2010 summary

    Early Findings learning papersexternal link:

    • Natural Curiosity
    • Best Foot Forward
    • Volunteering
    • Minority Ethnic Communities

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