Salford City Roosters named as green community well-being hub

A Rugby League club in Eccles has been recognised as a green community hub as part of the Northern Network Green Hubs Programme.

The Salford City Roosters have been recognised as a part of the initiative that aims to connect community-led green projects across the North of England.

The programme across the North of England, will be helping to create shared spaces that support wellbeing, biodiversity, and sustainability.

Over the past two years, the Salford City Roosters have been working to improve their site – planting trees, creating habitats, and starting environmental initiatives to become more sustainable, whilst continuing their operation of being a non-profit organisation.

The Roosters have been collaborating with Community Payback once a week, who supervise the facility and complete various activities such as clean and tidy, tree planting, as well as painting the internal sports side of their building.

Following the work conducted by the sports club, Interim Chairman, Dave Campbell said: “I would say we’ve planted around 150 trees on our site over the last 18 months.

“We have been in partnership with an organisation called City of Trees and that’s an ongoing relationship we’ve got with them and the Community Payback team.”

He continued: “Probationary services have helped us prepare the ground, maintain the ground where I planted the trees and they’ve done quite a lot of work for us like that.

“That was sort of the first phase of our green sort of project on site.”

The club will now be working in a 12-month partnership with Groundwork Manchester and will use the funding to develop their well-being space and area.

Dave continued to stress that they want members of the club and the wider community to be involved with this project.

He said: “Ultimately this isn’t just a space for our Salford City Roosters members.

“We want this to be sort of a partnership with the residents around the place and open the place up for them to come and get involved.

“There will be various skill sessions run over the next 12 months, and we’ll host them so that members of the community can come in and get involved.”

He continued: “Hopefully the local residents will find some green fingered residents who would like to come and do some volunteering in that green space and get involved.”

And the club will be welcoming people in the club, when they host a launch event on Tuesday 8 April, that will allow residents and the local community to have a look at the project.

Dave added: “It is an opportunity for members of the public who are interested to come and have a look at the site, find out about the project and how they can get involved.”

The club will also be welcoming visitors to register their details and have a look at the Salford City Roosters website to find out more information about the project.

The Roosters are encouraging people to get involved with this project and by coming down to the launch event.

And although it will be hosted by a rugby club, they have said that there should not be any barriers for people getting involved with the community project.

Dave continued: “It’s going to be quite a big piece of work, so they might want to get involved, whether project manager or just getting your hands dirty and putting spade in the ground.”