Project: Red Lea Gravel Pits
Location: Bolton
Value: £33k

This voluntary conservation organisation required a feasibility study to support their application for Lottery funding to realise their ambition to begin the development of this ecologically diverse though forbidding and inaccessible site. The area already came under the management of the Warden service of Moses Gate Country Park and the project was developed in collaboration with them and Bolton Metro who owned the land.

Approval of the funding enabled access to the exceptionally wet site with new, carefully drained and widened footpaths, access controls designed to help protect the sensitive ecology of the wetland site and pond dipping platforms to allow the use of the site by local schools. Particular consideration was made to allow access for the disabled to this difficult site by appropriately graded and surfaced paths and specialised kissing gates. The work has laid the foundations for ongoing development of a richly diverse ecological recreational resource serving the expanding community of the large new housing areas nearby.