It's been a very trying past week for turf professionals across the UK.
The snow brought chaos and cancelled fixtures to the sporting calendar. Groundstaff were doing their utmost to get surfaces cleared and safe to play on - sometimes helped by volunteers, sometimes helped by players!
I know amused onlookers from countries much more used to regular, heavy snowfall than we are, scoff at the disruption the white stuff causes us - but the fact remains, the conditions last week were highly unusual and therefore were always going to cause some difficulties.
A few days of golf courses closed and football matches postponed, seems perfectly natural for a country with a temperate climate such as ours. When it comes down as much as it did last week, grassed areas are always going to suffer.
Although actually, you could argue that one particular type of grassed area has a unique lease of life when the snow falls - our parks and open spaces.
These areas looked beautiful last week. And many would have been just as busy, being enjoyed by families taking advantage of snow days, as when their surfaces are being used by people having picnics or playing games. It's just the games being played last week included sledges and snowballs.
We've talked on here many times before about the value of our parks and green spaces. How they enrich the lives of communities, contributing to both physical and mental health - and how therefore their funding should not be left to stagnate. The snow days last week were just more evidence of that value.
If further, less anecdotal, evidence is required of the value of parks, a report was released last week by The Land Trust which highlights the direct economic benefits as a result of the creation of a park.
The report entitled 'The Economic Value Of Our Green Spaces' shows how parkland lifts nearby house prices, creates jobs and generates revenue for local businesses.
From studying evidence from the creation in 2013-14 of Port Sunlight River Park in Wirral, Merseyside, and from making comparisons with comparable nearby areas, the study identified a range of benefits around the park’s creation, including:
- Adding £7.8 million to houses within a 500 metre radius of the park - an average of £8,674 per property.
- Generating £48,000 annual revenue for the small businesses that operate in the park, such as dog walkers and ice cream vendors.
- Adding £38,000 revenue to other local businesses, where people have spent money while visiting the park.
What's great about this study is that it puts a monetary value on the benefits which parks bring to local areas - hopefully grabbing the attention of those in charge of budgets.
It goes further as well though and addresses what it describes as the barriers which need to be overcome for their vision of the future of parks across the country.
The Land Trust’s report concludes that:
- Developers need to start quantifying the impacts of green spaces on their housing development revenues - and factor-in from the outset the long-term costs of maintaining green space in order to maximise its value.
- Local authority planners need to make sure local planning decisions take into account funding for long-term maintenance of green space associated with developments - and ensure that new developments contribute to existing green spaces.
- Government must drive a culture change through planning policy guidance - to guarantee the necessary investment for maintaining green spaces in and around developments.
Euan Hall, chief executive of the Land Trust, said, "We need developers, local authority planners and central government planning guidance to come together and change how we think about green spaces - not just as places which support the government’s objectives around health and wellbeing, but also as assets that boost local economies."
If you want to find out more about the research and download the report you can do so by clicking here. As ever, anything which makes a sound case for the increase in professionally maintained, grassed areas, should be shown the support it deserves.
