An event was held in Templepatrick to celebrate the achievements of and highlight the difference the Green Spaces and Sustainable Communities (GSSC) programme has made to communities in Northern Ireland.
The Creating Common Ground Consortium was established in 1999. A year later, it was appointed by the Big Lottery Fund to deliver the GSSC programme. This has made more than £5 million available to help communities in Northern Ireland understand, improve, and care for their local environment.
More than £1.8 million was awarded to 86 community groups across Northern Ireland, supporting a range of innovative projects ranging from hydroelectric schemes to environmental gardens. An additional £3.2 million was distributed among the 40 most disadvantaged housing estates, to help residents transform the places where they live.
A range of projects were funded in housing estates, including the creation of multi-court sports areas, play areas, art works, entrance features, community gardens, sculptures, and other environmental works. The GSSC programme has also led to a reduction in vandalism and anti-social behaviour in many of the estates.
The Creating Common Ground Consortium is a strategic partnership of key statutory and voluntary agencies in Northern Ireland.
The Consortium is one of only 12 Award Partners with the Big Lottery Fund throughout the United Kingdom, and the only one in Northern Ireland delivering the GSSC programme.
Regeneration in Hull got a boost as Housing and Planning Minister Yvette Cooper announced £33.7 million for the Gateway Pathfinder scheme over the next two years. The Government will make available up to £10.7 million in grant to the Gateway pathfinder in 2006/07, and, subject to the availability of resources, up to £23 million in 2007/08.
The funding will help Gateway to renew housing markets in deprived areas as part of a wider long-term economic regeneration programme to boost jobs, schools and transport in the city centre. Hull still has a concentration of long-term empty homes and deprivation in and around the city centre.
The programme will create more viable neighbourhoods in Newington and St Andrew's in West Hull, and Ings and Preston Road in East Hull by bringing forward high quality affordable new homes, improving existing homes and replacing obsolete and abandoned properties.
£16.3 million of DCLG funding granted last year is already delivering quality new homes, including the building of 27 new homes in the Ings area to an EcoHomes Very Good standard, with high levels of energy and water efficiency, easing residents' fuel bills as well as helping the environment.
Plans for a greener Thames Gateway, with more family homes, better designed buildings and stronger leadership to fulfil its economic potential, were unveiled by Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly.
The Thames Gateway Interim Plan will lay down the foundations to create the conditions for 180,000 new jobs and 160,000 new homes over the next ten years, with over a third of these homes - 35% - designated as affordable housing. The plan suggests that unlocking the economic potential of the Gateway, Western Europe's largest regeneration project, could contribute up to £12 billion a year to the UK economy.
The new plans for the Gateway have been drawn up under government leadership by the Thames Gateway Strategic Partnership, which brings together all the public sector delivery bodies working in the Gateway.
The Partnership's ambition is to make the Gateway:
Greener - the Government's ambition is for the Gateway to be a low and then zero-carbon development, with no net emissions from new development. The Thames Gateway Parklands will provide green spaces throughout the area.
Better designed - a new design pact and CABE housing audits, working with local design champions, will root out poorly designed housing schemes; and there will be a clear requirement for local authorities to ensure enough family homes to meet local demand.
More highly skilled - with greater support to get local students into higher education and a new adult skills pilot.
An Olympic legacy - with government support for a cross-Gateway task force to ensure the Olympic legacy is expanded along the 40 miles of the Gateway. Their plan will be published next year and could include a new half marathon and network of sporting villages.
The Interim Plan will announce the increased capacity for 160,000 new homes to be built over the next ten years with an extra 40,000 in the London part of the Gateway, on sites identified by the GLA as suitable for development.
