Plymouth Gems - A quick overview

Why not keep up to date with the latest news from the Plymouth GEMS project.

Background

View of Plymouth Hoe from Central Park Plymouth City Council’s Environment Planning Service successfully applied to the HLF and National Trust’s Future Parks Accelerator (FPA) project. FPA aims to enable a transformation of green estate management, growing public value and achieving sustainability. One of 8 Local Authorities in the UK in the 2 year programme, it provides grant funding with an extensive package of support and advice building.

Aims of Plymouth’s Green Estate Management Solutions (GEMS) – a Future Parks Accelerator Project

From June 2019 – July 2020, Plymouth GEMS aims to find new ways to work with communities and social enterprise to

nurture a more collaborative approach to caring for our green spaces
develop an enterprising funding model;
enable a more inclusive and diverse user experience;
place the true value of these spaces at the heart of decision making;
establish a secure future for our natural spaces that ensures they can support our growth aims, particularly to provide a high quality of life for all.

Key themes

Operations: positive workforce change; new management approaches in key parks; improved use of technology

Collaboration: building community support; engaging social enterprise; communicating differently

Sustainable Finance: new income generation and financing models; valuing natural capital benefits

Phased approach

The Co-design phase (June 2019-Mar 2020) will help us to better understand the challenges and opportunities and create a shared vision for the future of our parks and pilot interventions using a quick test-adapt-learn approach. Central Park, Devonport Park and The Hoe are key parks within which we will focus our efforts during this phase.

The Transition phase (Apr 2020 – Jul 2021) will take the learning into a new sustainable, community invested model of management.