Downton’s Jim Carter backs Hounslow’s ‘Right to Grow’

Downton Abbey’s Jim Carter OBE has called on councils across the UK to follow Hounslow’s lead as the borough launches a pioneering new ‘Right to Grow’ policy.

The Emmy-nominated actor joined Councillor Salman Shaheen to celebrate the launch of ‘Go Forth and Grow for the Future’. The initiative opens up unloved and unused public land—often magnets for fly-tipping and anti-social behavior—for schools, community groups, and volunteers to transform into gardens and food-growing spaces.

The new scheme builds on Hounslow’s ongoing ‘Grow for the Future’ policy, which has already transformed seven sites since 2024 with over £200,000 in funding. However, this new ‘sister policy’ means residents no longer have to wait for the council to gain funding; if they want to get on and do it themselves, the council is giving them the ‘Right to Grow’.

Interested groups will be provided with a toolkit and signposted to potential funding opportunities, including the council’s own Thriving Communities Fund.

Four pilot schemes were already underway before the council formalised its Go Forth and Grow for the Future policy. These have seen community groups clear littler, trim overgrown vegetation and plant flowers in an Isleworth alleyway; transform an unused, overgrown, fly-tipped patch of grass by a railway bridge in Brentford; and plan a sensory garden on Ivybridge, one of the borough’s biggest council estates.

Carter, who is a patron of the children’s hospice garden charity Greenfingers, said: “I would like to send sincere congratulations to Hounslow Council for their enlightened and exciting new initiative, Go Forth and Grow for the Future. To offer under-utilised council ground to schools and community groups to grow plants and food and to reconnect with nature is both imaginative and far-sighted. I only hope that more local councils follow suit. I can’t wait to see the results and wish all involved a fun and fertile future.”

Cllr Shaheen, Cabinet Member for Culture, Leisure and Public Spaces, added: “The pandemic taught everyone, all at once, the value of green space – for our physical and mental health, and for learning about nature, biodiversity and sustainability. Sadly, many people living in flats do not have gardens to call their own, while unused land goes to waste, attracting fly tipping and anti-social behaviour. So we’re cutting red tape for green shoots.

“With this policy, the whole borough can be a garden, allowing residents to take over unloved land to grow food and flowers and allowing people of all ages to learn about and care for the environment by getting their hands dirty.”