Parishes and towns

Nature Recovery Plans

As part of the Building the Links for Rockingham Forest we worked with those parish and town councils in the northern part of the forest area who were interested in developing projects and volunteering opportunities for nature recovery and climate resilience.

Some communities are formalising this work by creating a "Parish Nature Recovery Plan", an idea that has been used by other groups across the country. You can read more about what this entails and the support that we provided on this page of the website.

There is also a 3-minute introductory YouTube video.

Support for your local campaign

Rockingham Forest Vision are very willing to support local campaigns that align with our aims. See, for example, this call for creating a more accessible footpath linking the parishes of King's Cliffe, Blatherwycke and Duddington-with-Fineshade. Please get in touch to discuss how we can help your campaign.

How about creating a Community Orchard?

North Northants Council are working in partnership with Stamford Community Orchard Group to enable communities and schools to plant fruit trees on publicly accessible land.

Does your parish have a Tree Warden?

Tree Wardens are volunters who plant, protect and promote their local trees.
No training or experience in tree management is needed – just a love of trees and a few hours to spare.

Community Grants

North Northants Council website lists a range of grants that are available for communities. These include the Rural Community Capital Funding scheme, the Augean revenue and small grants fund and more.

During 2023 as part of the Building the Links for Rockinghan Forest project volunteers and community groups were able to apply for funding up to £6000 to support projects linked to Rockingham Forest Vision. More details here. We hope to be able to offer a similar scheme, perhaps startingin 2026 - watch out for further news.

This map shows the 33 parishes or towns in the northern part of the Rockingham Forest Vision area, bounded by the River Welland on the northwest, the A1 on the northeast, and the River Nene on the east. The southern edges of this area were always less clearly defined and in the future we hope to work with other parishes and towns much further south, to include for example the towns of Thrapston and Kettering which were also part of the former forest.