£1 million win from Big Lottery helps pioneering Newtown Go Green for a Living

A consortium of locally based volunteers, community enterprises and organisations (including Canoe Wales and Welshpool Canoe Club) have successfully secured £1.1 million in funding from the Big Lottery’s Community Asset Transfer program. The Going Green for a Living consortium came together in response to Newtown and Llanllwchaiarn Town Council’s call to look at new and more sustainable ways to manage the open spaces of Newtown i.e. how could the community generate a better living from our green and blue assets?
Key landowners & partners in the project, Powys County Council and Welsh Government, have offered long term secure tenure of around 130 acres of land, to be held in a Community Land Trust, making this one of the largest community asset transfers of amenity land in Wales.
Chairman of Going Green for a Living, Stuart Owen, was pleased to announce this fantastic news. “This is all about doing things differently, about investing in our open spaces and developing economic and social opportunities for the town. Newtown will be pioneering a different approach, exploring how open spaces can be managed more imaginatively by the communities that use them to deliver significantly more benefits for residents and visitors alike. This is a truly grass-roots solution having worked closely with dozens of local volunteer groups and organisations for the past 18 months to make this dream possible. This is an exciting opportunity to put Newtown ‘on the map’. Our project is all about stimulating use of natural assets to deliver positive benefits”.
Stuart went on to explain “Whilst retaining and enhancing the beautiful open spaces, the plans include opening up access to the river for paddle sports and fishing, provision of youth facilities; BMX ‘pump’ track, greatly improved play park, construction of a Mountain Bike Trail, improved picnic areas, heritage and nature trails, food growing spaces and the building of a community hub to facilitate and enable access to our green spaces. Protecting and enhancing the special wildlife & biodiversity we have in our town will be of paramount importance and this will feature across the entire project.”