Enhancing the Valley for wildlife and informal recreation
The usual full programme of volunteering opportunities. Please note the booking arrangements in the programme if you wish to have a place in the Minibus.
No venues in the Valley as such, but close by there will be meadow raking at Cringleford Community Woods on the 10th and hedge trimming to improve bird habitat at Eaton Burial Ground on the 13th.
The full programme is here.
The University of East Anglia (UEA), like many universities has been facing serious financial restraints on their spending, and so when the UEA boardwalk needed replacing the university was unable to do this from its own funds. Recognising the importance of the boardwalk to the local community, UEA has provided instead strong staffing support to seek funds from elsewhere, including the Greater Norwich Growth Board and the National Lottery. At a meeting with the Yare Valley Society on Wednesday 28th August, ways in which bids can be carried forward with YVS, and other voluntary organisations, were explored.
The UEA team and the Yare Valley Society sends a big thank you for the generous donations and support, and UEA has issued an update on the progress made so far. If you have not already done so, there is still time to make your donation. It is pleasing to report that the amount of £1800 raised quoted in the update is already out of date. It is now well over £2000, please keep it rising. Being able to show strong community is essential if bids are to be successful.
Please read the update and see:
HOW TO GIVE
Please donate online at www.uea.ac.uk/dare-to-do-different. Or, to discuss your gift, please get in touch with the Development, Alumni and Campaigns Office.
Telephone: +44 (0) 7776 505172 Email: o.condra@uea.ac.uk
Development Office, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, NR4 7TJ
Thank you. Your donations bring the boardwalk closer.
Please help YVS to safeguard the Valley by responding to a consultation on the likely impact of installing pylons, solar panels, and other energy developments in the Yare Valley.
The Background
South Norfolk District Council is consulting on a draft Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) which deals with Landscape Susceptibility in relation to Energy Generation, Storage and Transmission as it relates to Local Character Areas* (LCAs) within its boundaries. It has drafted assessments of how susceptible the LCAs are to the development of solar photovoltaic panels, anaerobic digestion (AD) plants, battery storage facilities, overhead powerlines including 400kV lines that utilise the largest pylons (35-50m), underground cable routes, and substations. Among the LCAs assessed is LCA F1: Yare Valley Urban Fringe which is a part of South Norfolk that lies in the Yare Valley on the south side of the Norwich boundary (the river is the boundary).
The Yare Valley Society is concerned that the present draft susceptibility assessment in the consultation does not take fully into account the special circumstances of LCA F1. It is unique amongst the LCAs of South Norfolk, lying as it does in an urban fringe and forming part of the larger Yare Valley Green Infrastructure Corridor.
YVS is pressing for LCA F1 to have a special status and be included in the main body of the report under its own separate section. The YVS case for special status is here.
How you can help
Please read the YVS case, and if you agree, please then email (planning@southnorfolkandbroadland.gov.uk) to give your own personal angle on why F1 should be given special consideration.
The consultation ends on 1st September 2025, but please respond now.
Additional information
The click on the items below for the consultation documents.
Landscape Susceptibility in relation to Energy Generation, Storage and Transmission – SPD
Landscape Susceptibility SPD – Supporting Documents Appendices and Impact Reports.
For a second submission to South Norfolk Council, YVS is preparing a detailed response to Appendix 3 Landscape Susceptibility Analysis of F1 (Pages 76 to 85). You might like to have a look at this and send in your comments to Planning at South Norfolk (email above).
Thank you for caring for the Valley
*Local Character Area status provides a degree of protection from inappropriate development. In the case of the Yare Valley LCA this is reflected in Policy DM 4.5 Landscape Character and River Valleys: “All development should respect, conserve and where possible, enhance the landscape character of its immediate and wider environment. Development proposals that would cause significant adverse impact on the distinctive landscape characteristics of an area will be refused. …”
Some welcome news on the UEA Boardwalk. Norwich City Council have agreed to sponsor the UEA application to the Greater Norwich Growth Board (GNGB) for a grant to replace and improve the UEA Yare Valley Boardwalk. If the UEA application to the GNGB is successful, the funding could become available from April 2026.
To avoid the bird nesting season, which spans March to September, work to remove the old boardwalk and replace it with the new one will not take place until October 2026. In the meantime, when possible, the UEA grounds team will clear vegetation and cut back along the pathways to make the project easier for when it finally gets underway.
If you have not already done so there is still time to show community support for replacing the Boardwalk by donating to the UEA fund: under “Our Causes” be sure to select “Restore our Boardwalk”.
Matt Tomlinson of the Yare Valley Meadow Makers invites you to join the Meadow Makers work party on Marston Marsh to collect yellow rattle seed. This is becoming an annual event. The rattle seed will be used to promote wildflower growth on the Strawberry Field and UEA meadows.
Yellow rattle (Rhinanthus minor) is semi parasitic and feeds on the nutrients in the roots of adjacent grasses. In this way it suppresses the grass growth and creates more space for wildflowers to flourish.
There will be an evening session on Thursday 17th of July 7-9pm and an afternoon session on Saturday 26th of July 2-4pm.
All are welcome. Meet at MARSTON MARSH at ///found.maker.rocky (Marsh entrance near where the golf course crosses Marston Lane)
Referring to the Planning & Infrastructure Bill now before parliament, Craig Bennett, chief executive of The Wildlife Trusts says:
“The so-called Nature Recovery part of the Bill is a Trojan horse – it’s a misnomer because, in reality, it is a licence to destroy. It replaces vital nature protections with a weaker substitute, … [and so] … it puts irreplaceable habitats and threatened species at risk.”
Craig is not alone, Beccy Speight, RSPB chief executive, says:
“… the Bill in its current form will rip the heart out of environmental protections and risks sending nature further into freefall. … The evidence clearly shows nature isn’t a blocker to growth. The government has identified the wrong obstacle to the problem it’s trying to overcome, and that has led it to the wrong solutions.”
Beccy’s claim that nature is not a “blocker to growth” is backed by the recent report, Planning & Development: nature isn’t the problem.
Even the government’s own body, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), has warned that the Planning & Infrastructure Bill will cause “environmental regression”.
The Yare Valley Society believes the Planning & Infrastructure Bill threatens the community’s ability to protect the green space corridor of the Yare Valley. The Bill weakens the present requirement that a development should deliver a “net biodiversity gain”. It allows developers of small and medium developments (the majority) to transfer measures to mitigate environmental damage away from the development site to elsewhere. This means it reduces the likelihood of new developments near the Valley having green spaces that could serve as stepping stones, to link the corridor with the wider green ecology network. One final aspect is that it reduces the protections to globally rare chalk streams, of which the River Yare is one.
For an overview of what environmental groups are pressing for in the Bill, go to Wildlife and Countryside Link .
Please act now by writing to your MP.
Go to the Wildlife Trusts website to do this easily. It strengthens your message if you can tell your MP why Green Space and Wildlife are important to you personally, ideally by mentioning the Yare Valley.
In common with many UK universities UEA have been grappling with budgetary challenges and are not able to provide the cost of a replacement boardwalk. Instead UEA is making its contribution towards a replacement by providing the services of its staff to seek funding from other sources.
UEA ‘s success in securing funding for the cost of the design of the boardwalk has already been announced. A fully costed design is a necessary first step in preparing a bid for further funding to finance the removal of the old boardwalk and the construction of the new.
At the recent UEA meetings with the Yare Valley Society and other stakeholders on the design of the boardwalk, there seemed to be a general consensus on many of the features the design might include viz.:
Other features raised in the discussions included signposting and the provision of dog poo bins.
How you can help
The UEA is calling upon local communities to show their commitment to replacing the boardwalk by raising an initial amount of £2 000. This will enable UEA to seek further construction monies from various funding sources.
A big thank you to all who have contributed
towards the £1 100 raised to date
More than halfway there!
Nothing scheduled for the Yare Valley this month, but plenty of opportunities to volunteer elsewhere with the first shots being fired in the Himalayan Balsam campaign.
Mark Webster writes:
“Well the May blossom (hawthorn flowers) is already out, and now so is your May programme! Given the already-VERY-warm-and-dry weather you may well have cast your clout* already, but there are usually spare waterproofs on the minibus just in case!
Some of you may be surprised (delighted?) by the relative absence of Himalayan Balsam pulling this month, but don’t worry, there will be more of that in June, now that the funding to control this invasive weed has been confirmed for another year: hooray! It’s a job that keeps us off the streets – and onto some lovely stretches of riverside. Instead this month we have waymarker posts to install ( a good task for those of your who want to leave your mark on the landscape, as the recycled plaswood posts are likely to be pretty much eternal). We have also got a lovely long trip to lovely quiet Barmer (a good one for fans of Norfolk’s famous round tower churches), the chance to discover hidden garden heritage in Lowestoft, a free café lunch at the always interesting Blue Boar Lane, plus continuing our stately progress across the superb hidden wetland at Flordon, and a brand new site at Poringland Woods (although some of you may remember it from such courses as our woodland training day a couple of years back).
Oh, and not forgetting our ever-popular Jolly Trips for Volunteers – 5 fun days out as a reward for everyone’s hard work! People don’t have to have been out with us every week to attend, but please don’t make these the first time that anyone comes out with us! Booking is required for these days, either by emailing mark.webster@tcv.org.uk or texting 07740 899 691.
I do hope to some of your clients this coming month.
Mark.
*Ne’er cast your clout till may is out = don’t leave your winter clothes off until the Hawthorn (aka the May Tree) is in bloom.
Join us whenever you can, we do not require any regular commitment to attend.“
The full May Programme is here.
This month is unusual for having no work for the volunteers scheduled in the Valley. What is on offer is free bus travel to other places on the programme. Next month there will be some “jolly trips” for volunteers. Ideas so far include a boat trip, Blickling/Felbrigg, and Sheringham / the North Norfolk Railway, but more ideas are welcome for the usual 5 days of fun. Keith’s monthly letter and programme are here.
The last obstruction to accessing the McCarthy Stone green space has now been removed, opening up more possibilities for circular walks in the Valley. In the original plans a stile was proposed for this access point, but YVS argued that a stile was inappropriate for a green space adjacent to a development for the over 55s.
The green space has been extensively planted, and so hopefully in a few years’ time the rather stark view from the Strawberry Field into the green space will be softened.