Future plans

BMAT was set up to benefit the local community. While the original motivation was to prevent excessive urban development and protect the rural character of the area, we now know the community is at risk from other threats such as climate change, flooding, air pollution and loss of nature.  To address this we hope to manage more of the land to benefit nature while providing public access and creating improved opportunity for active travel.

We are working with organisations including Kent Wildlife Trust, the Forestry Commission and Maidstone Borough Council to ensure we can access funds dedicated to nature recovery, both to establish new habitat and maintain it in good order. We also are raising money directly from our supporters in the community through Friends of BMAT and our Just Giving page. We plan to have sufficient funds to employ someone to maintain our sites on a regular basis. Our volunteers are brilliant but it needs regular committed work and some expertise.

We hope to engage the community in spotting and reporting wildlife, learning from the regular contact with relatively wild areas. We are also keen to create more educational opportunities and wild experiences for children and young people.

Some of our sites have been designated as Village Green or Common Land which gives additional long-term legal protection. We plan to apply this approach to more sites going forward.

As the BMAT trustees are all volunteers with limited time to commit we also need to address long term sustainability and succession issues for its governance so the organisation is able to confidently expand and thrive.