New to the community and my role as greenspaces coordinator at NBT.
Would love any advice or tips on how we can embed our biodiversity plans into our PFI grounds and maintenance contracts. Any big wins or lessons learnt that other organisations have embedded into grounds agreements to support a biodiverse site?
Good luck Louise! i work with the PFI here in Portsmouth. It has been challenging to truly embed any serious change. You will have a 'service specification' for grounds maintenance and there will be opportunities to tweak that for biodiversity gain. Relaxing mowing regimes or requirements to allow natural regrowth whilst managing the municipal look and feel demanded on our sites. If you have land then i would deal with that separately and don't forget the ongoing maintenance demands of wildflowers or trees can make it prohibitively expensive. Clearly if you have any successes i would love to hear about them. Trevor
Look at the Grounds maintenance aspect f the PFI project . If for example there is a contract to mow 10000 sq m of ground 10 times a year reduce the frequency of mowing and leave some "wild areas" which can be further developed with monies released from the reduced mowing frequency and area to be mowed. Look to develop other habitats e.g. small wetlands or ponds if practical. Not strictly PFI but look at pest control methods - can more nature friendly methods be used? Whoever performs the maintenance helping you with BNG can be reflected in their social value particularly when looking for other contracts - social value is at least 10% of any tender bid score in the public sector.
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