Request for proposal – Green Book Business Case

3rd May 2022

Super Slow Way seeks to commission a Green Book compliant strategic outline case for four development sites along the proposed Super Slow Way Linear Park in Pennine Lancashire.

The Super Slow Way Linear Park is an exciting, pioneering, and deliverable vision and programme of change conceived for a 23-mile (37-kilometre) section of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal corridor. A project that seeks to marry physical improvements to landscape, infrastructure, and buildings and to expansive programmes of environmental, cultural, leisure, educational and economic activity. 

Completed in 1816, this waterway, the original ‘super highway’ of the Industrial Revolution, that once transformed Pennine Lancashire can today breathe new life and deliver transformational change to the area. It provides the backbone for a new Linear Park which aims to reveal and repurpose this great 19th century infrastructure, harnessing the same pioneering local energy to create new employment, educational, cultural, recreational, environmental, transport and tourism potential. 

The vision for the Linear Park is much greater than the sum of its parts – a blueprint for a post-Covid recovery in Pennine Lancashire; for a carbon neutral future, for a resilient economy and for an enhanced quality of life for communities in a rich post-industrial and bio-diverse landscape redefined as a linear heritage, recreational and cultural resource. The Super Slow Way Linear Park concept was identified in the Lancashire LEP’s Cultural Strategy as a key cultural project for Lancashire. 

A 2021 feasibility study and economic impact assessment, “Lancashire Linear Park: Unlocking the Potential of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal: The Case for Change” sets out the vision for the Linear Park. The study has helped to recently secure funding from the UK Community Renewal Fund to allow the project to be developed to the next stage. 

Three strands of activity are being developed in parallel with the funding: ‘Green Book’ business cases for four sites along the canal corridor (this commission), landscape strategies for the canal and a series of prototyping projects. 

Download full details here.

Appendices:

i.    The Pennine Lancashire Linear Park: Unlocking the Potential of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal: The Case for Change by Publica (2021)

ii.    The Pennine Lancashire Linear Park – Supporting Material: Maps by Publica (2021)

iii.       Lancashire Enterprise Partnership’s Cultural Investment Strategy (2020)

Please submit your Proposal to linearpark@superslowway.org.uk via WeTransfer as a single PDF document