Atlantic Gateway's Landscape for Prosperity

www.atlanticgateway.co.uk
The Landscape for Prosperity
REGEN 2015, Liverpool

1.
Accelerating Growth

Atlantic Gateway

Atlantic Gateway
Investment Priorities
1. Liverpool2
2. Liverpool Waters
3. Wirral Waters:
4. Liverpool J L A
5. Ince Park
6. 3MG
7. Mersey Gateway
8. Daresbury
9. Omega
10. Warrington Waters
11. Northern Hub
12. Port Salford
13. MediaCity UK
14. Airport City
15. HS2

2.
Landscape for Prosperity

Landscape character assessment
Landscape character areas
Landscape character
The Evidence Base

‘Adapting the Landscape’, 2009
The Evidence Base

Angel Field Garden, Liverpool Hope University (BCA Landscapes)
The Context

The Context
Everton Park – Fritz Haeg Foraging Spiral – image from Liverpool Biennial

Accessible landscape
Diverse landscape
The Approach

Water and the
Landscape
Urban landscape
The Approach

Innovative landscape
Playful landscape
The Approach

Partnership Geography
Nature'Connected''
GM'Natural'Capital'Group''
Cheshire'&'Warrington'LNP'

3.
‘PLACE’ Projects

Parklands PLACE
www.farrellreview.co.uk

Turn up
the signal,
wipe out
the noise

The Landscape for Prosperity will be delivered through a series of partner-led
initiatives and projects, championed by the Atlantic Gateway Parklands.
Together these will create a new dimension across the Mersey Belt – a collection
of strategic ‘Planned Landscapes and Creative Environments’; our Parklands
PLACEs. We envision these PLACEs developing under four categories:
Strategic Environmental Initiatives
Those projects with a direct link to the key
Atlantic Gateway economic assets and with
which the Parklands will seek a direct
relationship and supporting role to assist in
their delivery within the first 3–5 years of the
Parklands initiative.
Emergent Environmental Assets
Transformational partner initiatives, which
will create a landscape that is liveable and
investment ready. These will drive forward the
economy of the Gateway and support the
wider connection of environmental assets
through the creation of the Parklands concept.
natural assets which are critical to the
Gateway’s biodiversity and resilience and
which form the backbone of the
environmental quality that will act as a
competitive advantage in attracting and
retaining talent and investment.
Strategic Flood Defence Investments
Strategic Landscape Assets
The critical natural assets that can contribute
to relieving the drag on development by
dealing with issues at ‘Pinch Points’ and up-
stream of key developments through Green
Infrastructure and natural capital investments.
Parklands PLACE

Port Salford Greenway visualisation and concept plan (BDP)
Port Salford Greenway

Great Manchester Wetlands

GreenPrint for Growth

Wirral Waters Green Grid
Strategic Environment Initiatives
Town & Country Planning February 2015 77
this in the North End of Birkenhead. Ilchester Park
itself was never considered a park until 2014 – it has
only recently been adopted as a park by the local
authority. Before that, it was simply a neglected
green space in the middle of a windswept housing
estate that had seen better days.Ann McLachlan,
the local ward councillor and Deputy Leader of
Wirral Council, explains how much has changed:
‘Ten years ago, when I became a councillor, [the
park] had tenement buildings on it. It had a pub
known as the ‘Blood Tub’ (it was called the New
After a morning of unseasonal squalls, the sun
has broken through at Ilchester Park. Children are
gathering in a giant tipi in which African drummers
are ramping up the party mood. Others are preparing
costumes for a street parade. An avenue of young
silver birch trees has been yarn-bombed in bright
colours. Below them there are clusters of wild
flowers planted by local children.
It might sound like a typical August Bank Holiday
community festival in many parts of Britain. But
until recently nobody would have imagined doing
planting a sense
of pride
Julian Dobson looks at how the inclusion of green infrastructure
within regeneration activity in Birkenhead andWirralWaters has
improved local environments and helped to lay the ground
for further investment
Above
Fun for all – children queue up for the climbing wall at a community event in Ilchester Park
McCoyWynne
Dock Inn), and the old tenement style courtyard
was known as the ‘Bull Ring’. It was a rough,
tough area. But people from the North End live
in the North End, stay in the North End; their
families live here.’
In recent years a series of housing upgrades by
Magenta Living, the largest social landlord in the
borough, have provided new external cladding and
energy-saving improvements. Homes deemed unfit
or unsuitable have been demolished. A private
developer, Keepmoat, is starting to build homes for
sale on the demolition sites. But housing has not
been the only change. Ilchester Park is at the heart
of The Mersey Forest’s Green Streets initiative, a
key part of the jigsaw that is the regeneration of
the former industrial heart of Birkenhead and the
neighbourhoods that served the dock areas.
Green Streets is a programme to plant thousands
of trees across neighbourhoods in Merseyside and
North Cheshire, funded through a range of agencies,
including the Forestry Commission’s Setting the Scene
for Growth programme, the INTERREG ForeStClim
project, and the Government’s Local Sustainable
Transport Fund, as well as the Department of Business,
Innovation and Skills and the Big Tree Plant. In the
Wirral, it dovetails with long-term plans to improve the
green infrastructure and enhance biodiversity around
is being introduced to attract children and families.
The Veolia Environmental Trust has contributed
£67,000 through the Landfill Communities Fund to
construct natural play areas and a network of new
paths.
‘The community have got wide open green space
for their children to play in, for them to breathe in
really, rather than them being in an overcrowded
environment,’ Ann McLachlan says. ‘Physically
there’s a big difference, but it’s raised aspiration in
the community as well about a better quality of life.
I think local people feel a garden’s been brought to
them. Where people have no gardens, they feel the
greening of their community is a welcome addition
to their life.’
Anna Barnish, Manager of North Birkenhead
Development Trust, the main community organisation
for the area, sees the greening of local streets and
the revitalisation of the park as part of a long-term
change in the fortunes of one of the most deprived
neighbourhoods in the UK:
‘In spring when the trees are in blossom it looks
lovely, and people comment on how uplifting it is
to walk down a street which is lined with trees in
full blossom. If you look at the trees, there’s
been very little damage to them, which shows
the impact that the process of education and
engagement has had.’
That engagement has been secured through
close partnerships between Mersey Forest staff and
community organisations to involve local people in
choosing which trees are planted where, building a
sense of ownership of the greening of the wider
area. North Birkenhead Development Trust is now
supporting plans to set up a friends’ group to plan
events and activities and help care for Ilchester Park.
‘There are people that genuinely enjoy living here
and using the space and want to see it develop,’
Anna Barnish says. ‘It’s a very up and coming area –
there is the new Keepmoat housing development,
and Wirral Borough Council are doing loads and
loads to encourage positive development, with new
shops in the area. The fact that there’s new private
development in housebuilding says a lot. It says that
people want to live here.’
McCoyWynne
Above
A greener scene – tree planting by The Mersey Forest at
Egerton Dock, Birkenhead

4.
Delivering Parklands

author/illustrator:'Timothy'Basil'Ering ''

image'courtesy'of'Cheshire'Life'

Community Environment Fund
image'courtesy'of'Cheshire'Life'

4.
Next Steps

Liverpool City Region Parks Study Final Report ‐ 18/03/15
Peter Neal Consulting with Richard Tracey page 0

LCR
PARKS
STUDY
Commissioned by the Rethinking Parks Task Group

Established by Nature Connected
the Liverpool City Region Local Nature Partnership

Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council
with Halton Borough Council, Liverpool City Council
Sefton Council and St Helens Metropolitan Council

Final Report March 2015

Peter Neal Consulting Ltd
with Richard Tracey Ltd
Its Prospectus13
includes a wide‐ranging set of objec‐
tives and key messages that align closely with manag‐
ing and investing in the region’s asset base of parks.

The Rethinking Parks Task Group has specifically been
established within the LNP to work across boundaries
and identify alternative approaches to promote,
support and manage the city regions public parks and
green spaces.

The Group is seeking to develop more radical ideas and
models that can be submitted to the LNP Board for
further consideration. This study is part of the process
and may include the potential for establishing some
form of a Parks Agency concept. This could provide a
structure to coordinate and share activities across the
city region to support parks and green spaces and in
particular high profile ‘destination’ parks.

3.5 LCR Green Infrastructure Strategy

The Mersey Forest has produced an extensive green
infrastructure framework that includes Wirral and
Warrington. With detailed mapping of the GI resource,
including data on parks and private gardens, it makes
reference to the ‘establishment of a Parks Task Group,
to investigate a new approach to the management,
maintenance and marketing of urban parks’. The action
plan is structured around six ‘park compatible’ themes:

Setting the scene for growth
Supporting health and well being
Climate change
Recreation, leisure and tourism
Ecological framework
Rural economy

3.6 Atlantic Gateway Parklands

The Landscape for Prosperity14
sets out a vision and
investment framework for a wider region beyond the
LCR and local authority boundaries spanning Liverpool
and Manchester.  By making the best of existing
environmental assets and resources, including many of
the regions parks and green spaces, the framework
provides an environmental foundation for long‐term
economic development and growth.

13
  Nature Connected ‐ Liverpool City Region’s Natural Environment is
a Unique Asset
14
  Atlantic Gateway Parklands , The Landscape for Prosperity, June
2014

The Atlantic Gateway Parklands will use its approach to
‘Planned Landscapes and Creative Environments’ ‐
Parklands PLACEs ‐ to drive investment using its own
Community Environment Fund, which is available to
third sector organisations to fund innovative projects
and ideas.

3.7 EU Structural and Investment Funds

The European Union (EU) funding allocation for 2014‐
20 of £190m is coordinated by the LEP. This includes
investment in economic infrastructure, including green
infrastructure, to support growth, economic resilience
and attract investment and visitors.

The Blue/Green Economy and Place & Connectivity
portfolios provide direct opportunities for investing in
and managing parks and green spaces.

3.8 Health and Wellbeing Boards

Local councils now have direct responsibility, trans‐
ferred in part from the NHS, for improving the health of
their communities. This is primarily delivered through
Health and Wellbeing Boards that are established in
partnership with clinical commissioning groups.
Activities are structured and measured through the
Public Health Outcomes Framework.

Health and Wellbeing Strategies prepared for each
authority across the LCR provide a number of direct
and associated opportunities for using parks to
improve local standards and deliver a number of
agreed and pre‐defined public health outcomes.

A flexible model allowing individual authorities to pool
the management of particular parks, or park elements,
could be adopted. For example one authority may only
look to include heritage and HLF‐funded parks whilst
another may also include green flag parks and those of
further strategic importance.  It will be down to each
authority to decide which of their parks is considered
to be a strategic priority with all or part of their
maintenance potentially resourced collectively. This
process could also engage third sector expert advisors
in a similar way to current work being undertaken by
the Liverpool Strategic Green and Open Space Review
Board.

4.9 Phased Programme of Collaboration

A phased or sliding scale of collaboration, cooperation
and joint working across partners could be adopted
allowing time for further research and the flexibility for
individual partners to identify a strategy that meets
their own particular needs.
This could initially start as an informal network to share
skills and expertise that evolves into developing a more
coordinated approach to management and mainte‐
nance over the long‐term. The establishment of a
formal LCR Parks Management Board could follow
which could be endorsed at the city‐regional level and
its work led by a core group of Park Commissioners.
These would be recommended by each authority and
appointed by the combined authority.

Lord Street Gardens, Southport, restored with an HLF grant

It is useful to note that when the Greater Manchester
Combined Authority was established in 2011 it set up
seven commissions to guide its development. Each was
staffed by both elected members and a wider network
of partners. The Environment Commission included a
Green Spaces and Waterways Theme that was led by a
Green Spaces and Waterways Infrastructure Board
(which became the Greater Manchester Local Nature
Partnership). The formal establishment of some form
of a parks agency could follow that would provide a
structure to increasingly support and then lead the
management and maintenance of parks.
Adopting a phased and flexible programme of transi‐
tion to new ways of working is expected to be easier to
establish technically and politically.  However, it will be
important that there is a clear and agreed strategy for
establishing this model and each individual activity is
seen as an integral part of the process to develop a
more collaborative and coordinated model for deliver‐
ing park services across the city region in the future.

Confidential: Not for external dissemination
Private roundtable discussion
1
Private Advisory Roundtable Discussion:
“A Right to Beauty: The Role of Beauty and Good
Design in Fuelling Local Social Prosperity”
AGENDA & BRIEFING NOTES
Monday 23rd
March, 2.15 p.m. – 4.00 p.m.
Wilson Room, Portcullis House, Westminster, London SW1A 2LW
*Please allow sufficient time for passing through security*
Agenda
14.15 – 14.30 Participants arrive
14.30 – 14.40 Welcome and introductory remarks by Phillip Blond, Director, ResPublica
14.40 – 15.55 Discussion, chaired by Caroline Julian, Head of Policy Programmes, ResPublica
15.55 – 16.00 Conclusions and next steps
This project is kindly supported by:
Why,
Mr. Wilde,
do you think
America is
such a violent
country?

The issue of
sustainability is
here to stay
Armed with wealth
and the best of
health, in the future
when all’s well

It is possible to
husband the
environment and
reduce carbon
emissions without
sacrificing living
standards

Richard Tracey
Atlantic Gateway Parklands
t: 07841 458 696
e: richardtracey37@gmail.com
Interim Project Director

Atlantic Gateway's Landscape for Prosperity

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