RSPB St Aidan's: Leeds Council offer backing to £11.5m nature reserve upgrade plans

Facilities could be improved at wildlife sites St Aidan’s and Fairburn Ings under a project launched by the RSPB.

The charity is planning an £8.5m bid to the National Heritage Lottery Fund (NHLF) to support the scheme.

Leeds City Council has decided to give its support in principle for the bid as main landowner of the two sites near Castleford.

The RSPB has been managing Fairburn Ings since 1977 and St Aidan’s since 2017 under a lease with the council.

A council report said: “Since then, the sites have become valuable community assets and visitor attractions in addition to being thriving nature reserves and homes to rare wetland bird species.”

Some £805,000 is also set to be allocated from the St Aidan’s Trust, of which the council is sole trustee, to support the Wild Aire scheme.

The RSPB would have an overall budget of £11.5m for the project.

The report said most of the cash would be spent on St Aidan’s, which would get a new cafe and visitor centre, events space and car park extension.

Improvements at Fairbun Ings would include refurbished wildlife viewing shelters.

The report said: “The sites are large, between them totalling 650 hectares, and consist of a range of natural habitats including reedbeds, wetlands, grasslands, hedgerows and woodlands which are home to a wide range of wildlife.”

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If the funding bid is successful, the project would be carried out over five-and-a-half years at the former coal mining sites, which attract 170,000 visits a year.

The report said the St Aidan’s Trust was endowed with £1m by British Coal in 1994, but the sum was not sufficient to maintain the nature reserve in the long term.

It said: “It is anticipated that, if successful, the NHLF funded project will enable the RSPB to make St Aidan’s financially sustainable in the long term, while improving the visitor facilities and natural environment that have made it so popular so far.”