Written evidence submitted by Keep Britain Tidy [PKS 147]

Introduction

It has been know ever since the Victorians invested in public parks of the benefits they bring to users, both in social, environmental and economic terms, however to be able to deliver the myriad of benefits they need to be managed to a quality standard. For this purpose the Green Flag Award was established in 1996.

Green Flag Award Scheme

For the past 20 year the Green Flag Award scheme has been that standard, providing a framework for the management and measurement of quality of green spaces. The assessments, conducted by over 800 volunteer judges also provide a mechanism for sharing of good practice across the sector.

The scheme was developed as the minimum standard for the management of parks and green spaces and therefore any park that is being managed properly and meeting the needs of the users should be able to achieve the award.

The scheme is assessed against a set of criteria which are judged against two elements; the management plan and the quality of site itself.

The Scheme is managed by Keep Britain Tidy under licence for the Department for Communities and Local government and has grown from just 7 parks in England 1997 to 1701 green spaces across the UK in 2016. Although this is a small proportion of the estimated 27,000 green spaces we know many organisations used the Green Flag Award methodology to manage their green spaces even though they may not make applications for all of them. The scheme has two categories.

Green Flag Award – The majority of applications are made by local authorities however there are also a growing number of Universities, retail developments and housing associations using the Award to drive up standards.

Green Flag Community Award – Applications are made for green spaces managed solely by volunteers and community groups

The following table shows the growth in the number of winners over the past seven years for the two awards.

Green Flag Award

Green Flag Community Award

The Green Flag Award table highlights the issues faced by our parks and green spaces. While the overall number of parks achieving the standard has increase over this period by 37% and in Greater London to 57%, in the North West the number of winning sites has declined by 19%. The North East and Yorkshire and Humberside regions have also shown little change in numbers over this period.

A number of local authorities have been unable to maintain the Green Flag Award standard and have significantly reduced the number of applications to the scheme. The following table shows the maximum number of winners for that organisation in any one year and the current winners in 2016

Changes to budget and staffing levels

Over the past number of years applicants have highlighted their growing concerns and challenges of maintaining sits to the Green Flag Award Standard, due to staffing and budget reductions. We understand local authority parks managers have worked hard to reduce costs through efficiency savings. However there is significant risk that any further reductions, will inevitably lead to a reduction in standards.

Over the past 4 years we have surveyed our applicants regarding the change in budget and staffing levels, the results of these surveys can be found in the following tables.

Green Flag Award data analysis

Each of the elements for the Green Flag Award scheme receive a score from 01-10, we have analysed this data to investigate if there have been any changes over the past 8 years, our findings are as follows.

In most cases the assessment of the parks and green spaces has seen an increase in scores over the past years with elements such as clean and well maintained improving.

However when we look at the date for the management plan assessment, although small, we are starting to seen a decline in many of the assessment criteria.

We suggest the decline in the scores for the quality of the management plan is linked to the reduction in staffing numbers and budget, with many organisations reporting that they have lost skills or do not have the resource to work on plans.

This raises a major concern and is vital to the standards of our parks in years to come. Historically we know the importance of robust plans for the future. Without these plans our parks will lack future focus, direction and a framework to maintain standards. The reduction in the quality of planning can only lead to the decline of parks in future years.

A number of sites have already withdrawn from the programme or failed on the basis of management plans no longer being fit for purpose.

Recommendations

Keep Britain Tidy believe that to prevent significant decline in the standard of our parks and green spaces the Green Flag Award standard should be used to measure the quality of all our parks and green spaces, not just those that apply for the award, this would give a true national picture of the current quality and identify what is required to bring all our parks and green spaces to at least this standard.

Targets should be introduced for each local authority; we would suggest this to be either the percentage of people living within 10 minutes walk of a Green Flag Award park, or a target for the number of parks achieving the standard based on population.

September 2016