Celebrating our parks and green spaces

Parks and green spaces are the lifeblood of local communities. They create opportunities for outdoor physical activity, offer calming environments to aid stress reduction, act as a hub for community events, and provide benefits to the planet, too. Now more than ever these spaces need our support, so what better time to celebrate the benefits they offer than Love Parks Week.

Access to green spaces is essential for our health and wellbeing, but this engagement doesn’t have to be a hike in the middle of nowhere, or a climb up a mountain – the possibility to connect with nature is on our doorstep, if we only seek to look. Parks and local green spaces (however big or small) provide such opportunities, offering areas for dog walking, running and other kinds of physical activities, as well as a myriad of benefits to our mental wellbeing – reduced stress, greater calm, a sense of awe and ease – that come with being in nature.

Parks in particular can also act as community hubs, hosting events such as picnics, exercise classes, festivals and fairs. Gathering together as a community fosters feelings of connection and belonging, and positively impacts our mental health by helping to combat the perils of loneliness that so many experience in modern society. This is even more pressing in light of the announcement made by the World Health Organisation (WHO) at the end of 2023, which declared loneliness to be ‘a pressing global health threat’ with the impact comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Benefits for the planet

It’s not just physical, mental and wellbeing benefits that green spaces provide – they’re good for the environment too! An abundance of green spaces encourages high levels of biodiversity, and supports a proliferation of wildlife species. Trees, grasses and other plants also help filter and improve the air quality, and help negate the climate crisis by cooling surrounding areas and storing carbon from human activities. With high temperature records being smashed each year, there is an urgent need to find nature-based solutions, and England’s Green Belt and green spaces can play an important role in supporting positive change.

Protecting green spaces

Despite their integral value, green spaces and parks have not always received protection from development or funding to nurture and improve their impact. It is reassuring that green spaces are now – rightly – seen as essential parts of our communities, and since 2012 these pockets of green have received protection from development in the form of Local Green Space designation, with an average of 662 spaces designated each year. These spaces include school playing fields, parks, green corridors and country parks, in a variety of different areas.

CPRE supports a more consistent and standardised approach to the designation process to allow for the continued growth of local green spaces, particularly in areas of high deprivation where they are typically found in smaller numbers. You can read our local green spaces report here.

A celebration of parks and green spaces

Every summer, Keep Britain Tidy invites us all to come together for a week-long celebration of parks and green spaces. Love Parks Week (26 July – 4 August) reminds us how essential these spaces are in supporting and nurturing the health and wellbeing of local communities, and of the planet.

Watch out for events in your local area, or keep things simple and arrange a park playdate, a run, a picnic, or a stroll in the sunshine. It doesn’t matter if the green space is big or small, has lots of facilities or is a grassy stretch, all you need to do is enjoy spending time there.

Find out more and support the campaign here.