Creating the Greens

The process of creating the Greens began with the Countryside Commission having the idea of Millennium Greens in 1995; hence their logo on the Millennium Green material says "An initiative of the Countryside Commission". They submitted a grant proposal to the Millennium Commission in February 1996. The grant awarded was £10 Million to create 250 Greens.

Number of Greens
The target was to create 250 Greens, which involved starting with around 500 possible sites applying and starting the process. At one point the Countryside Commission predicted to exceed their target and published an estimate of 270 Greens in issue 5 of their Newsletter in Spring 1999. The list on the back of Issue 8 of the Newsletter- Spring 2000- shows the site numbers of all those who were at "Agreement Stage" and those at "Site Preparation Stage". The highest site number is 481 Rock Cross, however, by that time hundreds of plans had fallen by the wayside leaving 254 at that stage. The final figure quoted by the Countryside Agency is 245.