Nine precious landscapes across the country are to be restored with funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) totalling £21m to boost rural areas and provide long-term social, economic and environmental benefits to the respective areas.

The nine sites to receive funding are Coigach and Assynt in Scotland, the New Forest in Hampshire, Humberhead Levels in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, Ingleborough Dales in Yorkshire, North York Moors, Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland, Rusland Valley and Fells in the Lake District, Derwent Valley in Yorkshire and East Wight on the Isle of Wight.

HLF’s Landscape Partnership (LP) programme – which has now been running for a decade – is the most significant grant scheme available to landscape-scale projects. To date more than £160m has been invested in 91 areas across the country.

“The nine schemes we are supporting this year have all demonstrated a need for urgent conservation work to the natural and built heritage as well as a reconnecting communities to these places,” said Drew Bennellick, head of landscape and natural heritage at HLF. “They are important on many levels, including being an integral part of our health and well-being and a significant contributor to the tourist economy.

“The UK’s amazing countryside is under ever-increasing pressure and we must act now to make sure it continues as one of our greatest assets.”