We will invest £150millon in around 20 long-term projects in:

• National Parks and National Landscapes in England and Wales
• Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in Northern Ireland
• National Parks and other equally important world-class landscapes in Scotland

Our aim is to support those who care for these places to strengthen them as working landscapes, which are alive with nature and provide space for people to relax and connect with the environment. We’ll support whole landscapes to bring about significant and enduring improvement.

Read more about the ambitions of this strategic initiative.

Considerations for a Landscape Connections application

Your project delivery phase can last for up to eight years (increased from our usual five years), and as such, we will support flexibility in confirming partnership funding during the delivery phase.

In addition to the standard requirements of our National Lottery Heritage Grants, including responding to all four investment principles, your project application should:

• have an area of designated Protected Landscape at its core although flexibility will apply in Scotland  
• explain why a particular boundary has been chosen, ensuring the size of the area is compatible with the grant request so that delivery, engagement and impact is consistent across the whole project area
• follow our guidance for producing an Area Action Plan during the development phase, with the main focus to produce a project vision and blueprint for project delivery, within the context of any broader statutory management plan and nature recovery strategy
• allocate resources to join quarterly cohort working sessions, contribute to cohort working and attend in-person visits to learn from other projects
• Allocate resources to measuring the impact of your project for both nature recovery and engaging people so the contribution of this investment in meeting UK nature recovery targets can be assessed. Where they exist, government outcomes frameworks should be used. We may also ask grantees to report additional data through online data collection tools.

We are updating our guidance on using agri-environment scheme funding as partnership funding for projects and it will be available soon.

Large land acquisitions are unlikely to be supported by Landscape Connections.

Our ambition by 2033 is to have supported around 20 projects that:

• enable everyone in the UK to have access to landscapes rich in nature, clean water and fresh air, places that are inspiring in their beauty and cultural heritage
• help these landscapes to become better for nature and more able to welcome people from all backgrounds, including those who rarely visit them now
• deliver longer-term projects that are bold in ambition and create measurable outcomes for Protected Landscapes and equivalent outstanding landscapes in Scotland
• support those who live in and care for these places to strengthen them as working landscapes based on a clear diagnosis of why the landscape is currently failing to deliver for nature and people and how that will be addressed
• accelerate systemic and lasting nature recovery across whole landscapes, creating and sharing exemplars for how landscape conservation and nature recovery can be delivered with, by and for people who live and work there  
• create innovative frameworks for ways in which communities, landowners, organisations and those that manage the land can work equitably together to agree how to influence and drive change to ensure a lasting legacy

We recommend reading our good practice guidance on Land, Sea and Nature when preparing your application.

Branding and acknowledgement

Projects should use our acknowledgement guidance for Landscape Connections.

Who can apply

Applications are open to not-for-profit organisations, and partnerships led by not-for-profit organisations, from across the UK.  

Protected Landscape management bodies must be a key partner within any application relating to the landscape where they operate and where the works will be taking place, though they do not need to be the applicant or lead partner of an application.

If private owners or for-profit organisations are involved in the project, we expect public benefit to be demonstrably greater than private gain.  

We are unlikely to fund more than one project from a single Protected Landscape.

How to apply

You can apply for a grant up to £10m through our National Lottery Heritage Grants £250,000 to £10m. Start your project title with ‘#LC’ and include ‘Landscape Connections’ in the title, for example [area name] Landscape Connections.

If you are interested in developing a Landscape Connections project but are not yet ready to apply for a large-scale grant, you should consider undertaking preparatory work using our National Lottery Heritage Grants £10,000 to £250,000.

This funding could be used to help you prepare for a larger application by, for example:

• bringing in additional expertise and resources  
• supporting the creation of a new partnership  
• undertaking initial feasibility work  
• supporting engagement with local communities and organisations
• helping to articulate the initial project vision  

For grants up to £250,000, you can submit an optional Project Enquiry to get feedback on your project idea.

For grants over £250,000 you must first submit an Expression of Interest.

How we make decisions

In addition to our processes under the National Lottery Heritage Grants programme, we will assess how your project addresses the ambitions of the strategic initiative.

We may also consider issues such as achieving a geographical spread of our funding.

For this strategic initiative, for grants of less than £250,000 decisions will be made on a monthly basis by the senior investment or engagement staff of your nation or area. For grants above £250,000, recommendations will be made by nation/area committees, with final decisions made on a quarterly basis by our Board of Trustees.