Trent Gateway is a partnership project that aims to create catchment-scale improvements across 75 km of river. Stretching from the River Trent between Cromwell near Newark and Sawley, near Long Eaton, there is much to do in this section of the river. The broader Trent Gateway project brings together decision-makers, experts, and communities and has created an aspirational vision for this stretch of the Trent. Local authorities, environmental, and heritage charities, as well as government bodies have come together to facilitate an ambitious master action plan that sees the Trent and the communities depending on it thrive.
Trent Rivers Trust has been undertaking community engagement and other project-planning activities with partners. A current key activity is sourcing funding so that partners and Trent Rivers Trust can deliver some of the projects that are part of the Trent Gateway Masterplan.
A big theme of this project is to address the fact that although nature recovery takes a long time, we need to prioritise the activities that in the Trent Gateway area will make the most difference in speeding that recovery for the rest of the Trent Catchment. This requires partnership working at a catchment scale. There is now a shared understanding on how the river can recover and create benefits for the 5 million people living in, or within, an hour’s drive of the Trent Gateway area. The key task now is to fund and deliver a number or priority initiatives.
The project’s ambition for impactful initiatives has already reaped some far-reaching successes. As this part of the catchment is home to some of the country’s largest weirs, a new fish pass near Colwick is set to improve the migration of the nationally important, and dwindling stock of wild salmon. However, this is just the start of creating a Gateway to the Trent as other barriers to fish migration remain.
The community survey has started a conversation amongst key partners around the theme of access to green-blue spaces. The survey has shown that people not only enjoy the blue and green spaces in the project area – they feel deeply connected to them and want to see more investment in these areas.
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