Project overview
The Chester Wetland Centre is a The Chester Wetland Centre to create exemplar wetland habitat with educational benefits within and adjacent to a popular country park near the Countess of Chester Hospital while improving water quality in a contaminated watercourse. Binnies has supported the project since its inception with initial pre-feasibility work, a feasibility study and outline and detailed design.
Key project stats
Our role
Binnies has been supporting the development of this project since the idea was born in 2019. An initial study in 2020 focused on identifying and valuing the project’s potential benefits in natural capital terms, focusing on biodiversity, air quality and carbon sequestration. The study defined and described the project and the associated nature of opportunities and benefits, including a wider ‘green link’ concept within which the Chester Wetland Centre would be a key component in a ribbon of interconnected green infrastructure. This initial study succeeded in cementing partnership support and led to funding from the Environment Agency’s Water Environment Improvement Fund (WEIF), enabling the next stage of project development, feasibility study and outline design.
Our feasibility study and outline design established a shared vision for the Chester Wetland Centre that achieved the original aim of creating a low-nutrient wet meadow within the country park while maximising opportunities from adjacent land owned by project partners. It delivered additional habitat creation and improvements and increased ecological connectivity, ensuring improved water quality and floodplain connectivity. It improved morphological diversity for the Finchett’s Gutter waterbody and provided inclusive access for the local community, to enable an appreciation of nature and opportunities for environmental education. We set out the long-term maintenance requirements and costs, and the overall costs, delivery programme, risks and further work that would be required to make it happen.
We ensured all our technical appraisal work and design development was evidence-based, setting out the benefits clearly in terms of natural capital, biodiversity net gain and Water Framework Directive (WFD).
We have secured the WEIF to take the project forward at both outline and detailed design stages. This roject will enable the waterbody to work towards achieving WFD ‘Good Ecological Potential’ and deliver measurable benefits in water quality, removing nitrates, phosphates and sediments.
The wetland habitat was granted planning permission by Cheshire West and Chester Council in March 2026. The scheme balances habitat creation, water treatment and community access in a way that will deliver long term benefit and create a mosaic of wetland habitats.
- Himalayan balsam was prolific alongside Finchett’s Gutter upstream of the country park and needed to be removed before it flowered and seeded to enable surveys scheduled for late summer and early autumn 2022. At the specific time the clearance was needed (June 2022), Binnies UK was not in contract and funding was not in place
- Funding challenges
- Himalayan balsam clearance was carried out on 17 June 2022 by a team of volunteers comprising approximately 40 staff from the project partner organisations, including 13 staff from Binnies UK. This was a great example of practical collaboration between the organisations to deliver a key project objective
- Project assessment of biodiversity net gain benefits has created a route to future funding for implementation and long-term maintenance through investment by developers in the project’s biodiversity units, valued at £600,000–£800,000