Steven Roberts Groundwork NE & Cumbria new CEO
The Government’s new Environmental Action Plan 2023 has set ambitious targets to reverse nature’s decline, and a goal for everyone to live within 15 minutes’ walk of water, or green space, to improve the mental health and wellbeing of the nation.
UK’s leading environmental and community charity, Groundwork North East & Cumbria welcomes the plans as it focuses on issues they’ve been tackling for years.
To avoid wasting time and money on new initiatives, the charity has called on the Government to accelerate Groundwork’s existing environmental programmes.
Steve Roberts, Groundwork North East & Cumbria’s new Chief Executive outlines why Groundwork is well placed to lead on these environmental efforts.
“The Government’s announcement was music to my ears. Groundwork’s agenda is finally ‘coming home’.
While the UK now grapples with environmental and nature based challenges, we have been championing the fight for over 30 years.
We have spent the last three decades working to improve public access to nature, championing environmental improvements and bio-diversity and revitalising our estuaries and waterways. All this has been done knowing that mental health and well-being are improved by being outdoors and connecting to nature. Although welcome, the Government is rather late to the party.
Central to our approach has always been to improve places to improve people’s quality of life and connection with nature, what the Government is calling their ’15 minutes from green space and water goal’. We’re already on it, and hope that now the Government has adopted the agenda, it will be backed by funding that will turbo charge our efforts.
This is our bread and butter.
We are as well known for our grass roots, local partnerships as our strategic activities and we will continue working to support communities improve their local areas, and attract funding, which we hope will be more readily available.
Developing nature-based solutions to environmental problems is another important part of our work, and where we have enjoyed notable success of late. This work is also a large part of the Government’s new agenda. We adopt a bold, ambitious approach to tackling environmental and ecological problems with a heavy focus on innovation.
We hope that our successes will ensure that our ideas and projects will be adopted and scaled up to help communities and organisations achieve net zero, and support individual businesses in their efforts to cut and offset carbon.
We have always believed in delivering radical solutions and now in my new role as Chief Executive I want to re-ignite this radicalism, encouraging teams across Groundwork to be brave and bold to deliver results in all our activities. With the Government now committed to improving air and water quality we hope the work we have been doing in the North East will be rolled out to other areas of the country.
Take Our Great Geordie Reef as a prime example of our efforts. The island, moored on Newcastle’s Quayside, was the world’s first high-tide floating eco-system, providing ‘green’ training and jobs for people who helped to make it. It is also a phenomenal learning tool and test bed for carbon capture, biodiversity and marine eco-systems. We are working on similar innovative environmental projects in Whitby in North Yorkshire. In partnership with the Environment Agency and others, we are testing artificial habitats, including artificial living sea walls, rock pools and fish shelters to improve water quality and bio-diversity in the Esk estuary.
These projects provide a great platform for green training and employment, another of our key priorities for the year ahead. Equipping people with the skills to move into green jobs has been my focus at Groundwork for over 22 years, in my former role as Director of Youth, Employment & Skills. Now as Chief Executive, I am still championing this cause.
To deliver our charitable objectives, we recognise that much of our work needs to be done in partnership. Whether we deliver projects directly, or influence others to deliver activity that advances our goals and ambitions. We hope that the Government’s newly stated commitment to environmental improvements will help our cause.”