One Minute Brief of the Day:

Create posters to highlight the urgent need for proper investment in public parks and encourage all MPs to facilitate this. #PassionateAboutParks

Tweet your submissions to @OneMinuteBriefs & @parks_forum with the hashtag #PassionateAboutParks

Remember to add your twitter handle in the corner of your entries. You may even want to tag in @10DowningStreet too!!

PRIZE:

£200 cash for today’s winner!!

Who are we?

Essentially a large group of professionals from the parks sector have come together to form the Parks Management Association. At present the representatives are voluntary – no paid staff, just a network of likeminded individuals - passionate about parks and their value!

What are we trying to do?

We have identified the need for a well co-ordinated campaign that highlights the urgent requirement for proper investment in public parks, and the fact that central Government funding is the only practical way to achieve this.

A key aim should be to address the inequality of access to parks - both in quantity and quality between neighbourhoods, as this disproportionately affects people who live in the most deprived communities.

The public are mostly unaware of the declining standards of their parks, as deterioration has been gradual and often goes unnoticed. People also aren’t fully aware of how good their parks could be with proper funding and of the resulting benefits to them and their community.
In a nutshell - The UK is still living off the glory days of the parks revolution of the Victorian era… but the reality is that the UK is now in urgent need of a 21st Century parks reinvestment programme.

Targeted at who?

We would like all MPs to take action by recognising this issue and form plans in parliament to address it. We would also like to raise awareness to the public that the current picture in parks isn’t all rosy. What is widely accepted in the sector is that the ‘plight’ of parks has been known by successive governments for a long time and nothing has been done about it (see Government Response to the Communities and Local Government Select Committee Report: The Future of Public Parks)

Some of the key evidence on funding requirements:

Friends of the Earth – ‘England’s Green Space Gap’ – Recommends: “£2 billion per year for the next 5 years, together with an additional and ongoing £2 billion on annual maintenance and community engagement”
National Trust - Levelling Up and Building Back Better Through Urban Green Infrastructure – Suggests: “£5.5billion capital investment (over 5 years) would deliver £200billion in physical health and wellbeing benefits”
Parks Alliance (part of the Landscape Institute) - Making Parks Count – the Case for Parks - States: “parks in England deliver over £6.6 billion of health, climate change and environmental benefits each year including £2.2 billion in avoided health costs alone and are worth £140 per year to each urban resident. For every £1 spent on parks in England an estimated £7 in additional value for health and wellbeing and the environment is generated.”
Fields in Trust – Revaluing Parks and Green Spaces – Found that: “frequent personal use of parks and green spaces is worth over £30 billion a year to the UK population. That value translates into estimated savings for the NHS of at least £100 million a year from fewer GP visits”
The Charter for Parks - https://parkscharter.org.uk/ - Calls for action: “by all politicians, and in particular the Prime Minister, the First Ministers of Scotland and Wales, and the First Minister and deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, to adopt the six points of the Parks Charter.”
All-Party Parliamentary Group on Parks and Green Spaces APPG - “Through bringing together key stakeholders from local authorities to Parliamentarians, the group addresses the most urgent issues affecting our green spaces, including but not limited to funding”