Protos

Protos, is the UK’s first dedicated resource recovery park, focused around energy innovation and industry, will become a strategic cluster of complementary businesses encompassing energy-intensive industries and their associated supply chains, alongside energy generation to provide secure, low carbon and lower costs energy.

Landscape Design
In the first phases of the project, the development of the Protos Resource Recovery Park, RSK provided an extensive and influential landscape consultancy. RSK’s interventions not only consider but enhance the existing environmental characteristics and added mitigating and beneficial features to the existing landscape forms. Several landscape specific challenges were resolved during the early design process. These included the integration of the built structures into the wider landscape and the mitigation of visual intrusion of the scheme into extensive views. The site masterplan includes woodlands around the periphery to screen the resource recovery assets, including a biomass facility, from nearby residential areas. Transition planting was implemented to minimise the cumulative visual impact of a series of buildings that will be large relative to their surroundings.

RSK also undertook assessments into site aspects such as ecology, archaeology, soils and public access. Consultations with statutory authorities and stakeholders were maintained throughout the process.

Sustainability
RSK worked closely with Cheshire Wildlife Trust (CWT) to ensure the preservation of wildlife and part of the legacy of this project is the ongoing maintenance overseen by the CWT. In specific areas of the Protos masterplan, access to habitats is prohibited to promote bird populations, and bird watching hides were installed adjacent to footpaths to maintain public viewing opportunities. In other accessible areas, a diverse mosaic of wetlands, native hedgerows and woodland habitat are intersected by footpaths. Sustainable drainage systems combine with wildlife habitats and a network of scrapes, ponds and ditches. These systems are designed to support local water vole populations and attract further native fauna. Species-rich hedgerows and native woodlands have been introduced, including trees such as black poplar, which have local provenance to the scheme. The black poplar is one of Britain’s most endangered native trees with only around 370 known specimens. Recent conservation efforts have allowed RSK to plant 61 additional black poplars across the new ecological areas. Wildflower meadows have been seeded on a low nutrient substrate to provide habitat enhancement and aid the long-term maintenance requirements through means such as conservation grazing. Tree-lined routes provide a transition between the resource recovery park and the surrounding landscape and redirected public byways and footpaths enhance the journey through the site.