Deadline: 03-Mar-2025
The Sustainable Development Fund (SDF) is available to a variety of local community and conservation organisations (or individuals) to support projects for the conservation and enhancement of the natural beauty of the Suffolk & Essex Coast & Heaths National Landscape.
The Sustainable Development Fund reflects the Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs’ (Defra) objectives of sustainable development, partnership and social inclusion. It will aid the achievement of National Landscape objectives by encouraging individuals, community groups and businesses to co-operate in developing practical sustainable and local projects. Defra has stated that they would wish the scheme to ‘develop and test new ways of achieving more sustainable ways of living in countryside of great natural beauty and diversity, which enhance and conserve local culture, wildlife, landscape, land use and community’.
Purpose
- The purpose of the Fund is to support the statutory purpose of National Landscapes:
- To conserve and enhance natural beauty.
- Supplementary (non-statutory) purposes to National Landscape designation were developed in the 1990s and are:
- Recreation (‘the demand for recreation should be met insofar as this is consistent with the conservation of natural beauty’)
- Socio-economic (‘account should be taken of the needs of agriculture, forestry, other rural industries, and the economic and social needs of local communities’)
- Sustainable development (‘particular regard should be paid to promoting sustainable forms of social and economic development that in themselves conserve and enhance the environment’)
Funding Information
- There is formally no limit on the amount to be applied for per application. The panel usually award up to £5,000 per project although in exceptional circumstances higher awards may be made.
Duration
- Projects for this grant must run between April 2025 – 12th March 2026.
Eligible Projects
- Preference will therefore be given to projects that cover some or all of the following:
- Demonstration of innovation or best practice
- Promotion of or help implement social inclusion
- Actively involve members of the community
- Provide benefit to the public and well being
- Involvement or encouragement of partnership working
- Complementary to key local and national strategies
- Involvement of young people and/or other groups underrepresented in the National Landscape
- Has little or no access to alternative funding sources
Eligibility Criteria
- The Fund is open to organisations and groups from the public, private or voluntary sectors.
- Whilst applications from individuals are not precluded, there needs to be wider public benefit and it is expected that in most cases applications will be submitted on behalf of organisations, groups of people or partnerships.
For more information, visit Suffolk & Essex Coast & Heaths National Landscape.