Local authorities in England are spending almost £330m less a year in real terms on parks and open spaces than they were a decade ago, with the most deprived areas experiencing the deepest cuts, a Guardian analysis has found.
Years of deep budget cuts have left bandstands and playgrounds deteriorating, buildings crumbling, staff numbers decimated and parks’ upkeep in the hands of volunteers, according to park workers, volunteers and visitors.
The Guardian has learned that some councils are now submitting fewer parks for accreditation under the Green Flag awards, the benchmark of park quality, with those that have faced the highest reductions to budgets withdrawing the most parks.
Separate research found that a majority of parks management staff expected cuts to continue. Almost half expected to lose more staff in the next 12 months.
Alex Norris, the shadow levelling up minister, said: “Parks, playgrounds and bandstands are important public amenities, particularly for those less well off or living in cramped housing. But Tory governments since 2010 have had devastating consequences and decimated communities that rely on them.
“It is shameful that these community assets have been left to ruin by the government and local people should suffer their loss. The government cannot level up the country while it continues to strip these assets out of communities.”
The Guardian’s analysis found that almost 25% less in real terms was spent on parks across in England last year than in 2010, with close to three-quarters of local authorities spending less on parks and open spaces. In total, adjusting for inflation, £327m was taken from parks budgets across the country.
Areas that were already worse off suffered the most: 58% of councils in the most affluent fifth of the country cut their spending, compared with 87% of the country’s most deprived councils.
The most dramatic cut to spending was in Sunderland, which is among the top 20% most deprived areas. Between 2010-11 and 2020-21, the most recent year for which figures were available, Sunderland appears to have cut its spending on parks by 92%, from £11.2m to just £895,000.
Sunderland council disputed the figures, saying that public health and street cleaning departments were also helping with parks “to maintain high-quality services”, and that as a result expenditure was coded to different lines.
A spokesperson for the council said: “Whilst there is a reduction over the period of 2010 to 2020, this is from £11.4m to £10.8m, so is a much lower proportionate reduction in cash terms than the figures you identified.”
The scale of the cuts dwarfs the £39m promised as part of the government’s levelling up agenda to go towards the development of new green spaces in areas deemed to be most in need. This month 85 councils were chosen to “opt in” to a £9m fund, with potential payments of up to £85,000 – a drop in the ocean compared with the funding cuts over the past decade.
Park staff representatives and volunteers described a situation across the country of gradual decline, with cracked and broken paths left unrepaired, vandalised park benches removed and not replaced, dead trees and animals left to rot, gaps in playgrounds where swings once stood, and volunteers increasingly forced to take on work previously done by paid staff.
“It looks like continual, gradual decrease in the quality of many of our parks and open spaces – and so many of our really important parks and open spaces,” said Paul Rabbitts, the chair of the Parks Management Association, a representative body for parks professionals. “You wander around most of your public parks: potholes in footpaths. When was the last time the fence was painted? When was the last time the play area was upgraded?”
Parks in the north-east and the north-west were particularly struggling, said Rabbitts, who travels the country visiting parks as a Green Flag awards judge, as well as working as a local authority head of parks.
This was reflected in the Guardian’s findings. In the north-east, beyond Sunderland, Newcastle and Middlesbrough had slashed nominal park budgets by 60%, South Tyneside’s parks budget was cut by 76% and Hartlepool’s by 43%. In the north-west, Liverpool had cut 72% of its park budgets, Bolton 71%, and Blackpool 68%.
Allison Ogden-Newton, the chief executive of Keep Britain Tidy, which oversees the Green Flag Awards in England, said growth of the scheme was currently more marked in some regions, such as London and the south-east, than others.
“In addition, over the last 10 years we have seen some local authorities reduce the number of sites they submit for the Green Flag award and we are concerned that this links directly to a reduction in budgets in those areas,” Ogden-Newton said. “In some cases, where local authorities that have suffered the highest reduction in council budgets, we have seen a corresponding fall in the number of parks they are able to submit for an award.”
Clive Betts, the Labour MP for Sheffield South East, who chairs the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) select committee in the Commons, said the worst impact of the cuts would fall on the poorest, “because very often, if you’re more affluent, you’ll probably live near the countryside [and] you can get in your car and go there.”
He said: “Parks have just been so important and if they aren’t there, or they’re in a state where they can’t be enjoyed, then it’s a major disadvantage talking to people in the inner-city areas in particular, who would previously have enjoyed them.”
Last month MPs on the DLUHC committee heard there had been a resurgence of interest in local parks since the Covid-19 pandemic, when many other public amenities were closed.
The session aimed to find out what developments there had been over the past five years, since a major inquiry by the committee found parks were at a “tipping point” and facing potentially severe decline. Experts appearing before the committee warned that funding – and specifically the £39m promised as part of levelling up – was “wholly inadequate” to maintain green spaces.
Ellie Robinson, the head of urban green spaces at the National Trust, said a more realistic investment needed to “level up access to green space” was £5.5bn over 10 years. “That would have created physical health and mental wellbeing benefits of £200bn,” Robinson said.
The Guardian’s analysis was based on open spaces spending from local authority revenue outturn data published by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
It charted a decade’s spending by local authorities on parks and open spaces (also including, according to DLUHC guidance, play areas, nature corners and playing fields), assessed them on a rolling three-year average and cross-referenced the figures with indices of deprivation.
Gerald Vernon-Jackson, the chair of the culture, tourism and sport board at the Local Government Association, the representative body for councils, said: “Parks and green spaces are vital for supporting our carbon reduction targets and enabling access to nature, but also play a key role in maintaining the physical and mental wellbeing of communities across the country.
“Inflation, energy costs and projected increases to the national living wage will add £2.4bn in extra cost pressures on to council budgets this year alone, rising to £3.6bn in 2024-25. While councils have tried to protect the provision of parks, long-term funding streams are urgently needed to enable councils to continue maintaining existing spaces and develop further spaces to ensure everyone has access to a local park or green space.”
