Breckland Council has teamed up with the National Trust charity to plant three thousand trees at Oxburgh Hall.

The new partnership brings together Breckland Council’s commitment to plant more trees in the district as part of its environment sustainability goals and the National Trust’s aim of planting a total of twenty million trees across the country.

The district council is to invest up to £25,000 to support the woodland restoration project, which will see native, broadleaf trees placed on seven acres of land during the autumn-winter 2023 planting season. Oxburgh Hall is between Swaffham and Downham Market.

The scheme will enhance biodiversity and sustainability within the district and be securely fenced-off to prevent predation by the local deer population.

Swanton Morley has been named Norfolk’s first ‘mindful village’ on World Mental Health Day, after a group of residents accessed the Breckland Mindful Towns programme and trained to become mental health community champions.

Breckland Council launched the Mindful Towns scheme in partnership with Norfolk and Waveney Mind and Wellbeing Norfolk and Waveney in 2021. The program offers free Mental Health training and education to Breckland based community organisations and small businesses. The programme recognises those areas who engage with the scheme as a community, and who put provision in place to enhance the mental health of local residents, with Mindful Town or Village award status. 

A new mobile food store is launching to serve the rural communities of Breckland.

The service will provide a way to shop for healthy, nutritious food and store cupboard staples at a reduced price, to help residents tackle increasing living costs or difficulties getting to other shops due to isolation. Friendly expert staff on the bus are trained to offer wider support such as advice on debt management, isolation & loneliness and mental health, and will signpost customers to a range of services that can offer further help, where needed.

Informed by data, the bus will begin its route in early May, stopping in Swanton Morley, Bawdeswell, Shipdham, Carbrooke, Saham Toney, Ashill, Necton, Narborough, Weeting and East Harling.

The Daisy Programme and Thetford Town Ladies Football Club have announced they will be working together to raise awareness of domestic abuse, and the support available to those affected by it, in Breckland.

The Daisy Programme will run awareness sessions at the football club, and invite the players to become domestic abuse awareness ambassadors. The charity’s logo will also be displayed on part of Thetford Town Ladies’ kit, as a way of making fans more aware of the work they do.

The arrangement between the club and the charity was made by Breckland Council, which works with The Daisy Programme. Cllr Stuart Terry, who represents Thetford Boudicca ward on Breckland Council, is also an assistant coach at Thetford Town Ladies. He brought the idea of working with the charity to officers at the council, and the link was made with The Daisy Programme.

Today (Friday 22 October) saw the official unveiling of Dereham’s wayfinding panels and finger posts that have been installed around the town to help bring its rich history to life and direct pedestrians to various points of interest.

The project was led by the aboutDereham Partnership and jointly funded by Breckland Council, Dereham Town Council and Norfolk County Council. The 14 information panels, designed in the main by local historian Sue Walker from Dereham Heritage Trust, contain lots of interesting facts, maps and old photos about the town’s past and its famous people. The panels guide visitors around the town to its main attractions and local landmarks such as Dereham Windmill, Bishop Bonner’s Cottage and the Mid-Norfolk Railway. The panels are complemented by new fingerpost direction signs around the town. 

Once, if you were driving to Norwich or the Broads from the Midlands or the North you could not miss Dereham, in the dead centre of Norfolk. The A47 went straight through the middle of the place, and the chances were that you would be in a traffic jam and decide to take a break and explore this busy Georgian market town.

Now the probability is that you will pass it by, noticing perhaps just the sign to Dereham (also known as  East Dereham) . Those who live there know it as Dereham, a reference to the fact that in bygone times deer roamed the nearby woods and forests.