The Quantock Landscape Partnership Scheme (QLPS) is a £2.3m, 5-year project in and around the Quantock Hills. We started in April 2020

The QLPS was originally scheduled to end on 31^st March 2025, but partly because of our slow start during the Covid year of 2020 we had some budget left over and have extended to the end of November 2025. Most of our projects are now complete, but the extra few months will allow us to catch up on some of the public engagement and the coppicing season we missed out on in 2020.

The QLPS had 23 individual projects, ranging from grants for restoring hedgerows, historic features, and traditional orchards through to educational work with local schools, archaeological excavations, archival research, and a wide ranging and inclusive events programme. As is usual even without a pandemic, plans have evolved with some projects doing so well they were expanded and a few not going as well as we had hoped. Nearly 5000 people are taking part in our activities every year.

Our project area is some 200 square kilometres, essentially the Quantock Hills proper plus the surrounding ring of Parishes. This is roughly twice the size of the area covered by Quantock Hills National Landscape (formerly the QHAONB).

See the project map

Landscape Partnership Schemes are all about looking after a particular landscape, in our case the Quantock Hills, and they are about partnership working, bringing a diverse range of interests together to make a real difference to people and place.

The Scheme aimed to protect and restore the distinctive features of the Quantock landscape, improve management of the access pressures on the Hills, and make the health and wellbeing benefits of recreation more available to diverse communities in the surrounding towns and villages. We have increased understanding of the development of the Manorial landscape, how it underpins the character of the Quantocks, and of the wider natural, built and cultural heritage of the area.

The Scheme also worked to increase the resilience of organisations, communities, and individuals, building the capacity and skills of the volunteer base working in the area, and giving more people opportunities to contribute.

The QLPS is 79% cash funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, with additional funding from Hinkley Point C s106 (planning) money, the National Trust, Friends of the Quantocks, and the National Landscape itself. Volunteer time as help in kind is also a big part of our funding package.

It is hosted and led by the Quantock Hills National Landscape. The Scheme had a 5 person staff team, assisted by partner organisations, local people and communities, and a wide variety of contractors. However, as we near the end of the QLPS Dan Broadbent, our Historic Heritage Officer, is now part time and the Project Manager, Bill Jenman, and Wildlife Officer Paddon will be leaving at the end of July 2025.

The Quantock Landscape Partnership Scheme is
made up of 23 separate projects which aim to
work together to:

The Project Partners

As the name suggests the Scheme has been a partnership from the beginning of its development. It is overseen by a governing Partnership. Until April 2023 all the Local Authorities (County and Districts) were Board members, with Somerset County Council acting as overall lead authority, providing finance and IT systems and employing QLPS staff. Since April 2023, everything has come together under the new unitary Somerset Council.