Project to open Teville Stream awarded first stage lottery funding

Members of The River Ouse and Adur Trust

The Ouse and Adur Rivers Trust, in partnership with the Sompting Estate Trust, has been granted £67,900 worth of development funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, after an application was submitted in January.

The Enhancing Places, Inspiring Communities project would open up the Sompting Brooks to provide the largest area of public amenity space in the area away from the beach.

Sompting Brooks, which sits between the Dominion Way Industrial Estate in Worthing and Western Road in Sompting Village, is currently used for agricultural purposes and is inaccessible to the public.

Peter King, project manager at the Ouse and Adur Rivers Trust, said: “We are delighted that the Heritage Lottery Fund has given us this support.

“We are very excited to be given this opportunity to further develop ideas to restore and enhance this historically important stream, improve the area’s biodiversity and work with the community.

“This site has a rich and diverse history spanning many centuries, all of which will be investigated and displayed as part of the project.”

Teville Stream, which has been covered since the Second World War, starts in West Street, Sompting and passes through GlaxoSmithKline in Southdown View Way, East Worthing.

The project would see the stream diverted across Sompting Brooks, which would then be opened up to the public.

Sompting Brooks, which is part of the privately owned Sompting Estate, has been owned and managed by the Crofts/Tristram family for more than 250 years.

The site was once a tidal lagoon, before becoming separated from the English Channel.

The project will also involve a programme of public events, workshops and skill development courses.

Activities will include practical conservation, photography, heritage investigations and an educational programme based around water quality and ecological surveying.

Volunteers will be trained to help the future maintenance and management of the site.

The initial funding will help the partnership progress their ideas in a development phase, which will run until December 2017.

The partnership will then apply for a full grant of £871,400. If successful, the project is expected to run until September 2020.

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