New countryside park at Keele to be approved

A new countryside park is set to be created on council-owned land at Keele.

Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council has announced an opportunity to develop a countryside park – called Lyme Park – spanning across the former Keele Municipal Golf Course and featuring vast swathes of woodland and mature trees, with appropriate walking and cycling routes, including the commemorative and growing Lyme Forest which launched to celebrate the borough’s 850th anniversary.

As well as enabling residents and visitors to enjoy the outdoors and access nature in a formalised and improved setting with new facilities such as car parking, it would contribute to the council’s tree planting strategy by protecting a significant part of the popular open space from development and safeguarding biodiversity – keeping it as a green space for future generations – while maximising the natural ability of trees to capture and store vast amounts of harmful carbon dioxide.

Some of the 69 hectare site is allocated for homes in the council’s final draft of the Local Plan which has now been submitted to the Secretary of State for inspection by an independent planning inspector, leaving 66 per cent of the former golf course to remain as a public green space.

Council Leader Simon Tagg said: “Creating a countryside park at Keele is an exciting prospect. Quality public open space is recognised as a valuable amenity for people’s health and well-being, especially since the Covid pandemic, which aligns with the council’s priority to create healthy, active and safe communities.

“Although the site may not meet the threshold for formal designation as a country park, it is intended to apply the principles wherever possible to create a community asset which is accessible for residents and visitors, and free to use, both now and in the future. It’s envisaged that initial set up costs could be relatively low as the land already contains clearings, paths, copses, hedges and grassland areas.

“Over the past four years, we have planted 27,000 trees at selected places across Newcastle-under-Lyme, creating valuable carbon capture green spaces and saving 60 sites from development. A countryside park on part of this very large site – which closed as a golf course more than a decade ago – would enable the council to protect a significant part of it. Ultimately, it would also allow us to control any possible future development by limiting the number of houses built there.”

In 2023 – during year-long celebrations marking the 850th anniversary of the town’s first royal charter – 850 lyme trees of varying species were planted on a section of the former golf course, creating a Lyme Forest, in recognition of the original forests that gave the borough its name. Another 1,800 native broadleaf trees have since been added, with further opportunities planned.

Cllr. David Hutchison, Cabinet member for Sustainable Environment, added: “The council has adopted a sustainable environment strategy to ensure a sustainable future for Newcastle-under-Lyme that leads to improvements within our communities and a reduction of our own impact on the environment in everything that we do.

“A major theme is the natural environment, both in terms of habitat protection and nature recovery, but also increasing the local tree canopy and locking up carbon through creating new carbon capture woodlands, parks and green spaces. A countryside park at Keele would contribute positively to the ongoing development of this important strategy.”

The sustainable environment strategy outlines an ambitious goal to achieve net zero for the council’s operations and estates by 2030 and the wider borough by 2050.