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Fife Council and partners, NHS Fife and the Fife Coast and Countryside Trust, have been awarded £800,000 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund’s Nature Towns and Cities programme.
Nature Towns and Cities is driven by the ambition to enable millions more people across the UK to feel happier and healthier by experiencing nature in their daily life.
Fife plans to use this grant to look at how we can “Transform Fife’s Greenspaces” with the aim to integrate nature into urban areas, making them more accessible and beneficial for local communities. We want to be able to enhance greenspaces to support people’s health and wellbeing as well as the local culture, tourism and climate resilience that a healthy urban greenspace can bring.
Between 2026-2028 we will be working with communities in Dunfermline, Glenrothes, Kirkcaldy and Rosyth to trial new ways of developing and caring for greenspaces and coastal areas. We want to be able to create greener, healthier, more resilient and prosperous towns and cities across Fife and to help Fifers be able to enjoy time in nature close to home.
The project aims to:
Examples may include street trees, community growing spaces, urban woods, historic public parks, pathway walks, riversides, recreation grounds, water gardens.
The learnings will help to develop a new Greenspace Transformation Plan which can be rolled out across all of Fife’s publicly owned greenspace.
Across the UK, millions of people living in urban areas lack vital access to nature and green space that is close to home. Yet evidence shows access and use of nature makes us healthier, happier, more connected and more resilient.
Enjoying the outdoors: Enjoying time in green space and connecting with nature makes us happier and healthier. Whether it’s a space for walking the dog, relaxing on a park bench, or having a place to kick a ball around, being outside in nature can significantly improve mental and physical health.
Bringing communities together: With the rise of online communication, and particularly since COVID, social isolation is rising. People living in poverty, older people, young people, people with physical and mental health challenges, and people for whom English is a second language, are particularly vulnerable to feeling disconnected from their community. Green space can be the beating heart of community life, bringing together a unique mix of people and place. These spaces are even more special when communities can shape and care for them.
Helping helps us: Economies and societies are dependent on a healthy natural environment. Globally, biodiversity is in serious decline. Human demands on the natural environment from development, how land is used, as well as from the increasing impacts of climate change is causing this decline. Wildlife everywhere is struggling. The UK has lost 97 percent of its flower-rich grassland over the past 70 years. This has resulted in a decline of around two-thirds of pollinating insects, on which global food supplies depend. When we care for nature, people flourish too.
Resilient places: Cooling streets, cleaning the air, absorbing rainfall through green surfaces, and having lots of healthy trees and plants, means the effects of climate change in towns and cities can be reduced. Urban areas are not currently built to adapt to the predicted impacts of climate change, but bringing in more nature into urban spaces will help to sustain natural and human life in these areas.
Thriving places: From historic parks to community gardens, green spaces and natural infrastructure give our towns and cities their character, culture and heritage. They are also a source of local pride, making great places to live, work and invest in. Local people are experts in their places, and we want to help communities to be empowered to shape greenspace to meet their needs.
There are many ways to get involved with the Transforming Fife’s Greenspaces project. A series of citizen science surveys have been recently launched as part of this project to build a better understanding of Fife’s trees and hedgerows, whilst also supporting connections between Fifers and the local nature.
We particularly want to know about trees on streets, in gardens, and in other urban areas. This information aims to highlight the importance of and benefits from trees in these landscapes.
You can find out more about these surveys below.
We are looking for new community projects that could be supported by this funding. The ideas trialled in this project will help develop a new greenspace transformation plan for Fife. We are looking to support community-led projects to use or improve urban parks, other public greenspaces, riversides and beaches to meet community needs and aspirations.
If you have an idea for a community-led project in Dunfermline, Glenrothes, Kirkcaldy or Rosyth that will support nature or help more people to get outdoors please contact Transforming.Greenspaces@fife.gov.uk
