We are delighted to announce that Meadfleet are finalists in the Landscape Institute’s Landscape Legacy Award. The award celebrates a person, organisation or group which leaves a lasting landscape legacy. With a sustainable, long-term approach to managing the 545 acres in our management, Meadfleet are committed to creating a legacy of well-maintained, biodiverse open space areas.
About Meadfleet
Since 1995 we’ve been appointed by local authorities and developers to fulfil and exceed a role that local authorities are no longer able to, taking responsibility for the maintenance and enhancement of public open spaces, creating a legacy for stakeholders, protecting the developers brand and creating an environment that our customers value.
Meadfleet care for around 320 developments across England and Wales and these come with a variety of multi-faceted requirements including biodiverse species habitat, extensive woodlands, wildflower meadows and sustainable drainage systems designed to promote safe water levels.
Creating a Legacy of Biodiverse Open Space
Boosting the biodiversity of our open spaces is at the heart of our agenda and driven throughout our business by Meadfleet’s ecology team led by our Operations Director and Ecology and Conservation Manager, both qualified ecologists. We have assessed and benchmarked all our developments to identify and implement opportunities to increase biodiversity, going above the requirements of planning permission and the original design brief of the developments. So far, we’ve enhanced around 15% of grassland areas to improve their biodiversity value and have earmarked a further 37 acres for enhancement.
Launched in 2019, our Bee Friendly campaign embodies our commitment to legacy, partnering with Buglife, the UK’s leading insect charity, to create and promote additional pollinator habitats and provide customer and community engagement activities throughout.
Inspiring the Next Generation
We use our Bee Friendly campaign alongside other projects to provide engagement and education opportunities with our 40,000+ customers and their families, along with schools and community groups, promoting the benefits of diverse habitats and a move away from the previously popular manicured landscapes.
With schools and community groups, we host educational talks, bat walks, and planting days to inspire future generations. We provide free wildlife resources, advice and thousands of items including bird feeders, bird boxes, insect hotels and wildlife friendly seeds. This helps ensure our legacy of creating and promoting biodiverse landscapes permeates beyond the open spaces we care for.
Responsible Open Space Management
We recognise the importance of green spaces to mental and physical health. During Covid 19 we ensured green areas were accessible and maintained for residents to enjoy and use for exercise at all times with no gap at all in our service.
Our actions now reflect on our legacy to the future and in 2021 Meadfleet committed to the United Nations Climate Neutral Now Pledge and achieved Carbon Neutral status in the same year. We support a UN offsetting scheme supplying local communities in Malawi with improved fuel stoves, helping children stay in education, creating safer homes and reducing the use of timber. Meadfleet and our customers also donate to a sustainable planting programme with over 2,300 trees donated to date.
Managing Open Spaces for Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG)
With the forthcoming implementation of Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) regulations in 2023 as part of the Environment Act it’s an important time for the housebuilding industry in not just mitigating the long-term impacts of development on the natural world but as per the regulations, leaving areas in a demonstrably better condition than before.
Meadfleet’s open space management service supports the goals of Biodiversity Net Gain. For some time now we have been enhancing existing wildlife habitats across our portfolio to ensure maximum biodiversity value. We also go one step further by adding additional areas of habitat to our open spaces. Our long-term model and in-house ecology team will ensure the 30-year Biodiversity Net Gain covenant is successfully met with ongoing monitoring and adaptive management.
The Landscape Institute Awards 2022
The Landscape Institute Awards celebrate people, place and nature and the ways that landscape projects can connect them. In 2022 they received over 200 entries including a record breaking 53 from international entrants. The panel of expert judges have whittled the entrants down to 75 finalists with the winners to be announced at the awards ceremony in London on 24th November.
With a long-term, sustainable approach, Meadfleet are creating a legacy of safe, attractive, biodiverse landscapes for the benefit of local communities and wildlife whilst inspiring future generations to embrace a similar approach to sustainability and biodiversity.
We are thrilled our efforts have been recognised by the judges and look forward to the awards in November.
https://awards.landscapeinstitute.org/
About Meadfleet
Meadfleet is an award-winning, carbon neutral, management company founded over 25 years ago. Responsible for over 350 developments throughout England and Wales, we take a sustainable approach to open space management. Our Ecology and Conservation team ensure areas are managed to encourage biodiversity and we are partnered with leading insect charity Buglife, to help make the open spaces we care for more pollinator friendly. In 2021 we were awarded first place in the Pollinator category at CIRIA’s BIG Biodiversity Challenge Awards for their Bee Friendly campaign.
Appointed by housebuilders and local authorities and with a portfolio of more than 350 developments, all with a variety of requirements that include full infrastructure, complex sustainable urban drainage systems, biodiverse species habitat, street lighting, grass care, shrubbery, woodlands, wildflower meadows and play equipment, Meadfleet are the professional and sustainable solution to open space management.
Established in 1995, we are specialists in residential open space management and our aim is to protect and enhance these areas long into the future. We are committed to providing an excellent service and continually improving our environmental credentials, demonstrated by certification in BS EN ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management and BS EN ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management.
We are delighted to be a Carbon Neutral Company, the first in our sector to achieve this. As one of the most experienced and trusted open space management companies in the UK, we take our role seriously. We believe taking climate action is important for companies like Meadfleet and the housebuilders and local authorities we work with.
We’ve signed up to the United Nations (UN) Climate Neutral Now initiative, launched in 2015 to increase climate action. We have pledged to measure, reduce and offset our carbon emissions with carbon credits every year. What’s more, we’ve also chosen to obtain carbon offsetting credits, equivalent to more than our estimated total emissions since Meadfleet first began in 1995.
Meadfleet employ experienced regional managers to proactively manage open spaces and respond to customer queries. As voluntary members of The Property Ombudsman Scheme, we offer our customers access to free, independent redress should this be required.
At Meadfleet we’re passionate about keeping open spaces safe and attractive and also believe it’s important to manage and enhance areas for the benefit of wildlife. We run regular customer initiatives such as giveaways of wildlife friendly seeds, bee hotels and bird nesting boxes. Our Bee Friendly campaign was awarded top prize in the pollinator category at CIRIA’s Big Biodiversity Challenge awards.
Meadfleet’s in-house Ecology and Conservation Team is at the centre of our business culture, leading our approach to open space maintenance. With experience in creating and managing a wide variety of habitats we ensure areas are maintained sensitively and appropriately and oversee continual biodiversity improvements. We understand the additional requirements of Biodiversity Net Gain, both in relation to planning and the 30-year covenant. Meadfleet are uniquely placed in the market to provide the management and maintenance skills required to ensure delivery of the ongoing requirements of biodiversity net gain on residential schemes in perpetuity.
We know that a good quality, natural environment will enhance a local neighbourhood, improve well-being and contribute to improved house values.