Poorer, urban areas in England are the least likely to have protected local green spaces, despite the fact they need them the most, the first analysis of its kind has found.
To “level up”, local parks in urban areas need to be given the same protections as national parks, CPRE, the countryside charity, has said.
Important small local parks, at an average size of 1.8 hectares (4.5 acres), can be protected from development by applying to the council for them to be designated as local green spaces (LGS).
Local green spaces are small parcels of land, close to where people live, that are demonstrably special to their community, for reasons that can include their beauty, historic significance, recreational value, tranquillity or richness of wildlife. It is a neighbourhood planning tool with unique power, because it implies being valued by local people is in itself a strong enough reason to protect small patches of green space.
However, while more than 6,500 have been created across the country since 2012, when the designation was introduced, hardly any of these are in deprived, urban areas, and the majority are concentrated in wealthy parts of the south-east. While there are 5.9 local green spaces per 100,000 people in the north, people in the south-east enjoy 11.9. Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool are among the cities with no designated local green spaces.
Predominantly rural local authority areas account for 55% of LGS designations, despite the fact those who live there have far greater access to nature than their urban counterparts. Only 38% of the 100 local councils with the most green space-deprived neighbourhoods have at least one designated LGS.
A report by CPRE calls for the government to introduce compulsory standards for access to nature into planning law and policy and to add an indicator on access to nature to the index of multiple deprivation to help facilitate easier access to nature for all.
Crispin Truman, the chief executive of CPRE, said: “This is a solution to levelling up that has been hiding in plain sight; a planning superpower in the hands of ordinary people. All that people have to prove is they use and value the land for it to be eligible to be protected like it’s a national park.
“Unfortunately, there is a sliding scale of injustice when it comes to who is benefiting. Put simply, the poorer you are and the more nature-deprived your neighbourhood already is, the less likely you are to have any protected local green space. It’s time to address this imbalance and level up everyone’s access to nature.
“That is why we’re calling on the government to promise the equivalent of a national park for every neighbourhood. Local green space designation is a powerful way to protect vulnerable slices of nature, particularly in deprived areas. It has the added benefit of nurturing neighbourhood planning groups so that people get more of a say in what gets built locally.
“Our iconic national parks are rightly celebrated and protected. But research repeatedly shows they are not accessible to all – and that the poorest in society benefit the least. That’s why it should be a national priority to protect our local parks and green spaces so that everybody, no matter where they live, has access to the benefits of nature.”
