Eight parks and public spaces across Britain are set to be restored after receiving a share of £14m from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and the Big Lottery Fund's (BIG) Parks for People initiative.

The funding will also go towards increasing the number of volunteering and training opportunities for more than 1,000 as part of the schemes, which include planting, habitat creation and woodland and event management. Lichfield's Beacon Park, Minster Pool and the Garden of Remembrance in Staffordshire will receive the largest share of the funding, with a £3.9m grant set to be spent on transforming the open spaces through the restoration of the park's landscape and historic features.

A scheme to restore Coventry's War Memorial Park, which commemorates soldiers who died in World War I, has been awarded £2.8m, while the largest park in Sunderland – Barnes Park – will get £2.4m towards a £3.6m regeneration project. Elsewhere, MacRosty Park in Perthshire has been awarded £1.1m; Stevenage's Town Centre Gardens in Hertfordshire will receive £1.7m; £939,000 will go to Gyllyngdune Gardens in Falmouth, Cornwall; and Stafford Orchard in Quorn, Leicestershire, has been granted £645,000.

Burngreen Park in Kilsyth, North Lanarkshire, is the eighth park to receive a grant, worth £420,000, while an additional 13 parks have been awarded development funding worth a total of £1.6m in order to develop detailed proposals for applications totalling more than £20m. HLF chair Jenny Abramsky said: "Parks are important to our physical and mental health, providing much-needed space for rest and recreation in our increasingly congested and busy lives. This lottery investment will also provide exciting opportunities for people to develop new skills."

BIG chair Clive Booth added: "Not only will the funding help to safeguard these precious green spaces and the environment for future generations, but the volunteering opportunities created will be valuable, especially at a time where increasing numbers find themselves unemployed and facing many personal problems. "While volunteering does not replace paid work, it does help by increasing self-esteem and providing people's lives with structure, routine and learning opportunities."