Transfer cash to parks, says Open Spaces Society

Springfield Park

The Open Spaces Society, Britain’s oldest national conservation body, is calling for a "better deal for public parks".

The society’s general secretary, Kate Ashbrook, highlights the plight of parks in her ‘Opinion’ in the society’s latest issue of Open Space magazine.

Ms Ashbrook said: “Since our parks help to cut expenditure by promoting a healthier population, it makes sense to transfer money from health budgets to protection and improvement of green space, as an investment for people.

“The House of Commons Communities and Local Government (CLG) Committee, in its report Public Parks, published last month, warned that our parks and green spaces are at tipping point. The committee emphasises the many benefits of green spaces, for physical and mental health, social cohesion, climate-change mitigation and local economies. This is not new, many of the Open Spaces Society’s founders would surely have recognised these problems 150 years ago.

“With many others, we called on the committee to recommend a duty to be placed on local authorities to provide, monitor, manage and maintain parks and open spaces. But the committee felt such a duty could be ‘burdensome and complex’ and might not achieve the intended outcomes.

“We strongly disagree.

“While statutory duties are often not fulfilled, they normally secure at least some share of the available money and strengthen the hand of campaigners.

“We argued, without success, for better legal protection of open spaces. And we deplore their use for commercial events, but unfortunately the committee felt it was OK for local authorities to grant exclusive access to a park and to charge for some uses, after consultation.

“We call on Natural England to give priority to parks as people’s places, close to homes and essential for health, natural beauty, wildlife and a clean environment. This chimes with NE’s recent strategy for the twenty-first century which puts ‘people at the heart of the environment’ and in which NE promises to focus ‘where our work adds the greatest value’.”