Ealing Council has secured a portion of the Mayor of London’s £2million Growing Back Greener fund to support plans for a new ‘pocket park’ in Southall.
Pocket parks are designed to provide busy urban areas with a much-needed green space for local people to relax in. The council has received £56,880 from the mayor and will also provide £14,220 itself to develop a pocket park at Southall Square.
The work will see concrete pavement removed in favour of green areas, which will support local nature, provide a cooler space for people in hot weather and support sustainable drainage of rainfall in this part of Southall.
The Growing Back Greener Fund is available to boroughs that are increasing tree planting, improving access to high-quality green spaces for residents, and working to reduce the harmful effects of climate change.
New green spaces
New green spaces for Southall is just one element of the council’s ambitious climate action and biodiversity programmes, which, among other things, will see 50,000 new trees being planted to help expand the tree canopy to a quarter of the entire borough over the coming years.
Councillor Deirdre Costigan, the council’s cabinet member for climate action, said: “I am very excited that we have secured this funding from the Grow Back Greener Fund to support our plans for a new pocket park in Southall.
“Taking away hard paving and replacing it with green planting will help create cleaner air, and adding sustainable drainage will support our climate emergency actions by taking water to where it is needed in the park. This will also be a much-needed cooler space in hot weather and will be a lovely place for residents to sit and enjoy a little bit of nature in the middle of a buzzing town centre.”
Positive impacts
The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said: ‘The positive impacts of rewilding and green spaces on the environment are significant, which is why I am proud to be awarding a further £2million to tree planting projects in the capital.
“The extreme temperatures and devastating fires that raged across our city this summer laid bare London’s vulnerability to the consequences of climate change, proving that we can no longer afford to be indifferent or complacent about this issue. That is why I’m doing all that I can to tackle the ecological problems that we face by investing into vital projects to improve our climate resilience.
“My fund prioritises tree-planting projects in areas with low tree canopy cover helping to ensure that more Londoners are within a 10-minute walk of a green space. This in turn will help build a safer, greener, more prosperous city for all.”
Read more about the council’s climate action strategy, which is working to achieve net zero for carbon emissions for the borough by 2030.
