A river charity partnership has been awarded a prestigious prize for their programme which has spent around £5 million on improvements to the River Ribble.

Over the past eight years Ribble Life Together, a partnership of Ribble Rivers Trust and the Ribble Life Catchment Partnership, has brought together more than 20 diverse organisations to deliver the improvements.

Led by Ribble Rivers Trust (RRT), Ribble Life Together has engaged with 46 new organisations and communities, and left the catchment in a significantly better state.

Chief executive Jack Spees said: “Winning the UK River Prize is like winning an Oscar.

“It’s the one everyone in river conservation wants to win, and we’re thrilled to share this award with everyone who’s worked with us over the past eight years.

“It’s an amazing way to mark the end of this journey, but it’s also just the beginning of the story where we bring our rivers up to their best.”

The work was funded through £3.2m from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Environment Agency, Natural Course, Woodland Trust, Lancashire Environment Fund and others, and was supplemented by a huge volunteering programme, support ‘in kind’ such as use of facilities, and preceded by a £773,000 development phase between April 2015 and November 2016.

Projects have included: planting more than 24 hectares of woodland across 30 sites, delivering 15 wetland projects, building 14 fish passes, unlocking 114 miles of river habitat.

It has built fish passes on Hyndburn Brook which make it possible for salmon to swim into the centre of Accrington for the first time in 200 years.

Deputy chief executive of Ribble Rivers Trust and programme leader, Harvey Hamilton-Thorpe, added: “Ribble Life Together has been a game-changer for the River Ribble and the Trust.

“We’ve delivered more projects, engaged more people and learned so much in the last eight years, that the impact of this programme will continue for many years to come.”