Councillor Tudor Evans OBE (Leader of the Council) introduced the report and highlighted:

a)    The National Marine Park (NMP) was one of only 5 projects in the UK to have secured over £10 million from The National Lottery to celebrate their 25^th anniversary;

b)    The past year had been spent testing, and getting feedback on, the ideas that were in the original bid;

c)    The NMP had worked with 27 schools and 7,000 school children and had reached millions more people through digital engagement;

d)    There had been 42 community events including Big Blue Splash, school archaeology camps, swim safe, art sessions, NMP open weekends and more as well as having a volunteer programme;

e)    57% of attendees at events had come from the target audiences;

f)     Feedback demonstrated that the people of Plymouth liked and believed in the NMP and wanted to engage;

g)    Marine citizenship was a birth right and it was important to try and remove the barriers that people faced, reconnect them to the sea and change their behaviours;

h)    There were plans to restore waterfront gems with 21^st Century twists at Mount Batten, Mount Edgcumbe and Tinside;

i)     There would be a new National Marine Park Festival and a new large-scale community engagement programme with 5 digitally immersive events.

Kat Deeney (Head of Environmental Planning), David Draffan (Service Director for Economic Development) and Elaine Hayes (National Marine Park Interim CEO) added:

j)     Important to invest in the waterfront so people could access the water, it was important to engage with people across the city, particularly in the north and west of Plymouth;

k)    The digital approach would be important to engage people with what was happening below the water;

l)     The garden battery at Mount Edgcumbe was not accessible at that time but would be turned into a heritage centre;

m)  Access to the Mount Batten Tower would be improved, as well as the public realm in front of the Mount Batten Centre.

In response to questions it was explained:

n)    Councillors would continue to receive a calendar of events and activities to share with residents to keep them involved;

o)    If there were any schools that wanted to work with the team on engaging with the project, they should get in touch and a list of schools that the team were engaging with would be shared with Councillors;

p)    A ‘teach the teacher’ programme would run alongside the schools programme with the aim of giving teachers the knowledge, tools and confidence to run sessions on the NMP and to have a teacher in every academy that would lead on this work;

q)    It is important to use the funding to bring unused gems back into use through the project, such as the garden battery at Mount Edgcumbe;

r)     The digital immersive approach aimed to give everyone access ‘under the water’ without getting wet:

s)     A digital asset bank would be built to be used in different places and spaces to engage as many people as possible with the NMP;

t)     The Mount Batten Centre improvements would allow them to increase the number of young people they could engage with improved changing rooms, an improved pontoon for disabled access and increase their offer of both residential and day trips and increase their revenue stream;

u)    Engagement with younger people through youth patrols found that most reacted positively and engaged with rangers, so it was important to find ways of engaging them with the NMP through the ranger program and encouraging them into volunteer and work experience roles;

v)    Water quality was important to the NMP but there was a limit to what the Heritage Fund could cover, but the NMP was working with South West Water on issues with their systems to improve water quality in Plymouth and continuing to promote the NMP and people engaging with the NMP would support this;

w)   There was a creative approach to fundraising to support the work, and to use grants to create income streams to make the project sustainable;

x)    The NMP would play an important part in the tourist economy of Plymouth.

The Committee agreed to:

1.    Note the project progress since the last report;

2.    Endorse the approach to the delivery phase bid of the NMP Horizons project and support submission of the bid in September 2023;

3.    Request that the project team return at regular intervals during the delivery stage to update on the progress of the project.