Brown’s Piece:

We in Wotton Community Land Trust Ltd set out in broad terms our plan for Browns Piece. We organise this via the 3 pillars of sustainability: environment, society, and economy. We set out our plans on three timescales, long term for the next 20 years, short term in the 1st year, and medium term in the 1st five years. It is a plan in high level summary. The details will be finalised as part of the short term action in the “society” section, for participatory management planning with our 300+ members.

The key features under each pillar are:

Environment: The main environmental benefits of our ownership of Browns Piece will be improvement in wildlife value. There is also some marginal benefit for greenhouse gas storage, helping to reduce flood risk, safeguarding clean water, and reducing pollution.

Society: The main social benefits of the initiative are enhanced health and wellbeing through maintaining and enhancing access to nature and opportunity for informal recreation on the site, the development of social capital through participation in the initiative, health benefits from enhanced access and volunteering activity, and by adding meaning to the landscape though active participation in caring for a bit of the locality.

Economy: The main economic benefit will be due to increased social and environmental capital contributing to the ability of the town to attract and retain talent. It is remote that we will be a significant business in terms of financial turnover or an employer nor will there be any development on site. Most of the resources we use will be spent locally and raised via voluntary donations, gifts in kind, sale of goods and services in keeping with our objectives, and/or grants from inside and outside the community.

Sustainability is about balance with trade-offs across environment, society and economy. We have traded off economic benefit against enhanced social and environmental benefit by protecting the land from development. This was one of the motivations behind our campaign. But we are not anti-development in and of itself. The access we provide will be welcoming but low key and informal so as not to reach levels that harm nature or other aspects of the environment we manage. But the nature on our land is robust. It can cope with a degree of disturbance and we can design the site to balance social and environmental benefits.

We are inspired by the swifts. Their resilience and optimism in returning each year kept us going through the campaign and will keep us going as we care for the land. Their joyful, screaming, circling above Wotton has given voice to our more reserved expressions of joy. But joy we feel as we walk and work on this land. It is our land.

Have a look at our Sustainability Plan