Environment & Neighbourhoods Committee chair and local councillor Jill Whitehead says:

“Sutton Council is bidding for heritage lottery money for a number of important heritage type projects in our borough and has been successful in a bid for the Ecology Centre, Festival Walk, here in Carshalton, the jewel of the borough’s crown, as it were.”

The project is designed to encourage greater use of local nature sites by creating Nature Explorer backpacks which parents will be able to hire from the Ecology Centre to use with their children. This will benefit a new generation of schoolchildren who will learn more about nature, local sites and associated fauna. Sutton Council was successful in achieving grant funding of £6,500 (“every little helps!”) and Sutton Council itself will provide another £2,000. The preparatory work has been carried out on designing maps and backpacks.

A launch event will take place in early Summer 2014 and we’re told that the backpacks will be in use throughout next summer onwards.

The Old Rectory in times past before it became the Sutton Ecology Centre in the heart of Carshalton Village