Southwark estate pays for new homes for feathered friends

4 July 2019

A group of green-minded residents on a Southwark housing estate have successfully bid for council funding to install Swift boxes around their flats.

The Kinglake Tenants and Residents’ Association were awarded £3,000 by the North Walworth ward members from Southwark Council’s Cleaner Greener Safer funding to install the nesting boxes under the eaves of north-facing blocks of flats on the estate.

Swifts are a priority species (Amber List) within Southwark's Biodiversity Action Plan for the provision of nesting sites in the built environment (SOBE4). Swift numbers have halved in the last 20 years due to a loss of nesting sites.

Julian Weston, Secretary of Kinglake Tenants and Residents Association, applied for the funding. He said: “We just felt this was a simple project that will bring so much to the area. The Swift boxes will help restore the local Swift population, support our local biodiversity and will even provide some real life educational opportunities for local school children, including the nearby Surrey Square Primary School.”

Cllr Richard Livingstone, Cabinet Member for Environment, Transport and the Climate Emergency said: “This is precisely the sort of project that the Cleaner Greener Safer fund was set up to support. The boxes are a simple, unobtrusive addition to the flats that will make a real difference to the local environment and fits in perfectly with the council’s own biodiversity plans for the borough.”

Page last updated: 04 July 2019