Chalk streams are globally rare habitats supporting some of our most threatened plants and animals. Unfortunately, this fragile natural landscape in the Lincolnshire Wolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty has been seriously degraded over the last century resulting in a loss of biodiversity. England’s chalk streams have priority habitat status under Section 41 of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities (NERC) Act 2006. The Lincolshire Chalk Streams Project (LCSP) must attract investment to help fund projects to improve our rare and unique chalk stream habitats, springs, and blow wells. This NEIRF grant will help us to identify opportunities and open the channels of communication with investors.

The project will deliver towards the 25 Year Environmental Plan enhancing and protecting freshwater chalk stream priority habitat, achieve clean and plentiful water, thriving plants and animals and build resilience to climate change.

An economic story board will be built to identify and work towards overcoming barriers to investment. From this an investment model will be created that will monetise the chalk streams and enable us to better communicate with investors. The project will also provide training for the wider Lincolnshire Chalk Stream Project (LCSP) partnership so that we can all sell the opportunities available on the chalk streams to both buyer and sellers. The project has the potential to be replicated by other partnerships taking on the role of the conduit between buyer and seller.

We will test the model to attract investment in an active restoration project the LCSP are leading on and delivering with partners and landowners. This will help us to refine the model.

This is a partnership project between Lincolnshire County Council (LCC) and Lincolnshire Chalk Stream project. There is LCC representation on the delivery group and the two staff members from the LCSP are actively engaged in delivering towards the outcomes along with the specialist advisors from Hillside Environmental Services.