£21 million Lottery boost to help preserve nine amazing UK landscapes
9 of the UK’s most beautiful and distinctive natural landscapes today received grants totalling more than £20 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to help conserve them for generations to come.
Coigach and Assynt, a beautiful and remote part of North West Scotland
This investment will ensure a boost for rural areas and provide long-term social, economic and environmental benefits. The landscapes are:
- Coigach and Assynt, a beautiful and remote part of North West Scotland
- New Forest and its extensive ancient woodland and heathland
- Humberhead Levels spanning Yorkshire and Lincolnshire
- Ingleborough Dales, a limestone landscape in the Craven district of the Yorkshire Dales National Park
- North York Moors, home of the pioneering ironstone industry and the early development of railways
- Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland, the largest fresh water lake in the British Isles
- Rusland Valley and Fells, in the South Lake District National Park
- Derwent Valley, a coalfield area in North East England left behind by deindustrialisation
- East Wight, the eastern tip of the Isle of Wight and an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
The HLF’s Landscape Partnership programme is the most significant grant scheme available for landscape-scale projects. To date, over £160m has been invested in 91 different areas across the UK.
Welcoming the announcement, Lottery Minister Helen Grant said:
The UK’s amazing countryside is a constant joy for people living locally and a delight for tourists from all over the world. But it is also under ever-increasing pressure. So helping to conserve our finest landscapes for future generations to enjoy is a great use for National Lottery money.