Preserve Our Reserve – End of Year Update (December 2020)
As we come to the end of 2020, the Preserve Our Reserve Advisory Committee would like to provide an update to all our supporters with the progress that has been made since we launched the fund at the beginning of June, shortly after the devastating fire that did so much damage. We have been working closely with Natural England (NE) and we are all extremely grateful for the huge amount of community support that we have received for the Thursley National Nature Reserve (NNR). We have all been overwhelmed by the large amount of money donated to the Preserve Our Reserve fund – now standing at over £50,000 - and we are committed to working with all our stakeholdersto ensure that the fund is used carefully for the purposes for which it was donated. We are also looking at ways of adding to the fund. In September, we submitted a detailed application to Waverley for Community Infrastructure Levy funds. We believe that we put forward a very strong case and indeed Waverley confirmed in advance of our submission that our application would certainly appear to ‘tick all the boxes’. We were therefore very disappointed when the deadline for applications was extended until the end of January, therefore delaying any grants being made, but we remain hopeful that we may receive additional funds from Waverley in the Spring. Since the fire, you will have noticed that NE have undertaken significant ‘recovery’ works, including tree safety, improving the fire-break network, and the removal of the damaged boardwalk. These works have incurred significant, unbudgeted costs for NE, but no ‘Preserve Our Reserve’ funds were used for any of these works. NE have not yet come forward with a design for a replacement boardwalk/trail. Whilst we are anxious to move things forward, we do need to look at ideas that provide a long-term solution for the NNR. Replacing like for like may not necessarily be the best solution and we must avoid the temptation to rush into trying to find a ‘quick fix’. NE have to consider a broad range of issues, including the impact on local habitats, future fire risk on the NNR and how this might influence the material/construction type of the boardwalk. And we all also consider it a priority that any design needs to provide safe disabled access. Realistically, it is very unlikely that there will be a replacement boardwalk/dragonfly trail in place before next Spring, and completion of the project may take considerably longer than that. We did raise with NE the idea of making some immediate funding available to them if that would have enabled at least some of the boardwalk to be replaced over the winter, but the cost of even limited rebuilding would have been significant, and the inevitable delays caused by an appropriate tendering and procurement process, together with planning issues, would have made this impractical. In the interim, NE’s priority is to ensure the safety of visitors but of course it is impossible to ‘secure’ the route of the boardwalk from access.…
