I read with interest recently that over 2,250 of the UK’s best parks and green spaces have been awarded the coveted 2025 Green Flag Award.
As a Green Flag judge, I always find it rewarding to judge these amazing venues and see the hard work and effort it takes to maintain these diverse public open spaces.
The Green Flag Award is the benchmark international quality classification for parks and green spaces, providing the high standards against which sites are measured, and which land managers, local authorities and volunteers pledge to achieve when applying for the award.
The scheme was launched 29 years ago, with the first awards given a year later, to recognise and reward the best green spaces in the country - four parks that received their first Green Flag Award back in 1997 have flown it every year since. They are:
- Cockington Country Park – Torbay Coast and Countryside Trust
- Worden Park – South Ribble Borough Council
- Queen’s Park – City of London
- Highgate Wood – City of London
This year I was able to judge several parks in and around the Midlands and I’m happy to report that many achieved the Green Flag standard.
This is especially pleasing when one considers that many local authorities are facing difficult budgetary cuts to services.
I read a recent article published by Paul Rabbits, chairman of the Parks Management Association that sums up the frustrations of many parks professionals regarding ever decreasing budgets for parks. You can read it in full here.
Paul passes comment on a government spokesperson who says a £9 million UK-wide Levelling Up Parks Fund will provide grants to deliver over 100 green spaces in communities with the lowest access and a new £30 million fund will pay to overhaul 30 local parks in England with a focus on improving facilities for young families.
Given the number of parks across the country Paul says the government’s response is “frankly stunning in its lack of understanding of the reality.”
He goes on to say, “Play for children should be a given, quality parks and green spaces should be a given… when oh when oh when will government realise this and start doing something about it rather than pathetic responses like they give … parks and play and green spaces are vote winners. So fund them.”
I feel most of the comments Paul mentions in his piece are warranted. I also tend to agree that many new politicians are only interested in their own career advancement and often do not have any affinity or interest (or even a grasp) of what our industry is about - and what is needed to improve and deliver parks services.
For me, they need to spend more time with senior parks managers and get to know in detail the frustrations and issues we are currently facing in the local authority sector.
But more importantly they need to understand the value of what parks and public open spaces bring to the community. For many years we have produced plenty of evidence of what parks bring to the table, in terms of health and wellbeing - but for some reason these politicians are still not prepared to invest properly in parks. Which I believe is because we are not registered as a statutory service.
