Top marques for project

The Banks Group have been awarded a Tidy Britain Group Millennium Marque for their restoration work at Oakenshaw in County Durham.

Banks spent five years transforming the 100-acre opencast site into an attractive wetland nature reserve with woodland margins, a complex of ponds and broadleaf woodlands, with public access provided through a new footpath network. It is the only site in County Durham to receive the Millennium Marque award.

Oakenshaw was among 125 projects in the UK to receive the marque. Each project had to pass an inspection by the Tidy Britain Group, the Tourist Board of England, Scotland and Wales, the Conservation Foundation, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the Royal Town Planning Institute.