Fields in Trust

In 2023 our annual Green Space Index on Great Britain's parks and green spaces looks at the walkability of neighbourhoods and finds that 6.1 million people have no park or green space within a ten-minute walk from home.

It is no secret that some areas will inherently always have more green space than others, simply because they are less densely populated, more rural, or because they feature large open spaces such as Hyde Park in London or Heaton Park in Manchester. But decades of poor planning decisions and a lack of strong guidance on how parks and green spaces should be designed, has resulted in severe shortages of these immensely beneficial spaces for many parts of the country.

A new method which calculates the distance from every household to its nearest local park or green space has shown that nearly 10% of people in the UK don't have either within close walking distance. Furthermore, some local authorities have an abundance of parks and green spaces, whilst others have virtually none, resulting in widely different amounts of space per person. For instance, Birmingham and Haringey local authorities, both with approximately 350,000 residents, have huge differences in provision, with 41sqm of park and green space per person for the former and 7sqm per person for the latter. London boroughs with similar population sizes such as Islington and Harrow also have significant gaps, with Islington only having 7sqm per person, whilst Harrow has 36sqm respectively.

Parks and green spaces are a vital resource to the communities which they serve, offering a space for recreation, socialisation and for nature to thrive amongst the built environment. But this protection has never been entrenched in law, in particular planning law. Currently there is no minimum provision of parks and green spaces that local authorities are required to designate and protect in their area and whilst current planning practices do involve setting out which areas will be used for parks or green spaces the public can access, this does not legally protect them from being developed on.

Without urgent course correction the problem will worsen as the population grows. Local authorities are increasingly under pressure to develop more homes and infrastructure, but there is an insufficient requirement to include additional parks or green spaces on these new plots, meaning that ultimately it will reduce the average provision and people's access. Our estimates are that just to maintain the current average provision of parks and green space in Great Britain at roughly 30sqm per person, we will need a further 4,000 new spaces by 2033, targeted in the right areas to increase access for those with the least at present.

Liverpool City Council has made a first-of-its-kind commitment to protect all the city's parks and green spaces in perpetuity with Fields in Trust, ensuring they can never be sold off or build on.

Liverpool is the first local authority to ensure local access to green space in perpetuity for all its citizens by legally protecting each of their eligible parks and green spaces. The pioneering strategic partnership, which was agreed at the city council's Cabinet meeting on Friday 19^th March, will see 100 parks and green spaces across the city protected, covering over 1,000 hectares of land which will always remain as green spaces for sport, nature and play.

The commitment also sets an ambition that no resident in Liverpool will live more than a ten-minute walk from a high-quality green space which is protected in perpetuity. It is a landmark decision that will benefit both people and place not just for current residents but for generations to come.

Parks and green spaces have been vital over the last year as places to play, exercise, relax, reflect and to stay socially connected whilst physically distanced; they will continue to be important as part of our recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

Fields in Trust and Liverpool City Council will be working together to turn the commitment into reality and the city's green spaces will be protected in a series of phases. The first phase of the partnership will see 20 parks across the city secured forever, ensuring just over 64% of Liverpudlians live within a ten-minute walk of a green space for good. These will include local community parks in areas identified by our research and analysis as having the highest strategic need for protected green space provision, as well as all ten of the city's major parks. Well-known spaces which will be protected in this first phase include Stanley Park, Sefton Park, Princes Park and St John's Gardens.