More than a park – vision for South Essex Estuary (SEE) Park announced

The South Essex Estuary (SEE) Park plans include a continuous and accessible coastal path stretching from Tilbury Fort to Shoeburyness, ensuring every home will have easy access to high quality green space, creating new woodlands, restoring marshlands and completing a huge network of natural landscapes.

The park will be a single, unified, regional parkland which will ensure that the natural wonders which abound throughout Essex are all connected as part of the same ecological community. This single park system will address the challenges of providing access to green spaces, improving health and well-being and air quality, mitigating the effects of climate change including flooding, boosting eco-tourism and green job creation, restoring biodiversity and helping the region achieve a net zero carbon footprint.

Cllr Rob Gledhill, Chair of ASELA said: “This is a game changing project which understands that nature and the environment do not recognise local authority boundaries. The SEE Park vision takes advantage of joined up working to create a network of green spaces throughout South Essex which complement and support one another with improved connectivity and inclusive access.

“The local councils in South Essex have worked together to achieve this consent and now is the time to start to deliver it. The park will serve as a standard bearer for place-making ensuring that residents across South Essex have even better access to a diverse range of natural green or blue spaces and get the advantages of all the health and well-being benefits that creates. It will also provide carbon offsetting opportunities for local businesses right on their doorstop.”

Cllr Ian Gilbert, ASELA lead for this work programme, said: “SEE Park will provide 200 km of enhanced continuous coastal paths and create over 550 km of greenways and cycleways. By ensuring a holistic approach to enhancing and maintaining our local green spaces and the ecosystem they sustain, we can help ensure that South Essex is a greener and healthier place for our residents.”

The vision has grown from the South Essex Green and Blue Infrastructure Study which scooped the Excellence in Tackling Climate Change and Landscape Planning and Assessment accolade at last year’s Landscape Institute Awards.

SEE Park will be an astonishing parkland setting with game changing benefits for all South Essex’s residents and businesses.

Image courtesy: Alexandra Steed Urban