Platform Development

Summary

BACKGROUND Nature Towns and Cities is a coalition of organisations (National Trust, Natural England, and National Lottery Heritage Fund) working together to inspire, incentivise, and support UK towns and cities to take ambitious action for urban green space. Our aim is to help millions more people enjoy time in nature close to home, in greener, thriving towns and cities. We want more urban areas to use nature recovery and nature-based solutions to tackle health inequalities and climate change, and to put nature at the heart of communities to grow their prosperity, connection and resilience. This commission seeks to support UK towns and cities to access private funding and stimulate an urban greening marketplace. This will begin by providing an online 'marketplace' where urban greening interventions, such as street tree planting, can be tokenised and purchased/funded. SCOPE OF THE WORK In order to help Local Authorities and their partners access private funding, Nature Towns and Cities is looking to develop an online 'marketplace' platform to enable funders to purchase / fund urban interventions in the form of tokens, starting with urban tree tokens. Previous work has broadly validated the demand side requirements for tree tokens and produced a strawman outline of what functionalities may be needed on a platform, for example a map to display tokens at a street, town and national level. Further demand side testing is required, and we would like this to be supported by a theoretical display (prototype) of the marketplace platform to help communicate the concept. This prototype should at a minimum display theoretical tokens, provide the ability to click on a token and see more information such as price, nature-related benefits and photos, the ability to bundle tokens and 'check-out'. The second part of this commission (to be developed in tandem with the prototype) is to produce a functional minimum viable platform / marketplace hub from an existing platform hosted by the supplier. INFO TO BE RETURNED · Outline of your proposed approach to the project, including details of methodology, proposed outputs, timeline and high level risk log. · Description of your relevant experience and abridged CVs of the proposed project team, including examples of at least two similar pieces of work you have carried out. · Proposed budget breakdown, including any ongoing costs and fees associated with platform hosting, management and handling of funds. · Capability and capacity to be involved in long-term provision of services and outline of what these services would involve (~25 months). · Details of any matters or concerns not covered by this brief. Submissions should be no more than 8 pages in length. Abridged VCs can be included as appendices. These should be returned to anne.mackinnon@nationaltrust.org.uk by the deadline of 5pm, Friday 24th October 2025. Please see the attached Request for Tender for more information.