Crich Neighbourhood Nature Plan
October 2024
Transition Crich signed up to preparing a Neighbourhood Nature Plan earlier this year. The plan is an initiative from Derbyshire Wildlife Trust and has participants from across the county.
The idea behind the plan is to make sure Nature is not forgotten by decision makers such as politicians and for local communities to decide how to help nature in their own area.
Prior to the general election, we formed 3 priorities for Nature in our local area. These were devised following the community engagement event held by the parish council in June where we asked people to write down what they would like to see for Nature in our local area.
From suggestions made, we were able to see there were common themes across 3 main areas:
- Planting to increase biodiversity
- Maintaining green corridors
- Having no inappropriate building developments
These became the 3 priorities for our plan. We then wrote to all parliamentary candidates for our constituency of Derbyshire Dales, asking them to ensure that they heeded what our neighbourhood priorities were. From 7 candidates, we received 1 reply! This demonstrates there is work to do to keep pressure on our politicians to put nature first in their decision-making.
On October 12th, 3 of our members attended a meeting with our elected MP, John Whitby, organised by Derbyshire Climate Alliance, to hear him answer questions about nature’s recovery, climate change, and biodiversity loss, amongst others.
More about his response in the next newsletter.
On a practical level, we have been planting some areas around the village to improve biodiversity. This has included collaborating with Futures Housing to plant flowers and trees on land they own. We are also collaborating with the parish council to look at improving biodiversity on their land too. We have also had a gardening stall at the Glebe's Octoberfest to encourage and advise people on how to help nature in their own gardens.
We will continue to focus on our 3 priorities with practical work such as planting and working with other interested parties in the local community.
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