Love Parks Conference Report

On Wednesday 14th July, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Future Parks invited all of those we have engagement with so far to join us for our Love Parks Conference to highlight the importance of parks and open spaces for communities, for nature and for individuals health and wellbeing. We also showcased some of the fantastic projects and activities happening in parks and open spaces across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough as well as discussing the legacy of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Future Parks as the project moves into its next phase.

You will be able to access all of the slides and key points of discussion from the Resources page on the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Future Parks Website.

Parks are our Common Cause

We were joined by a fantastic line up of key note speakers including Gillian Beasley, Chief Executive for Cambridgeshire County and Peterborough City Council and Chair of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Future Parks Executive Board, who talked about why parks matter and the opportunities of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Future Parks to create a joined up vision and sustainable future for our parks and open spaces that realises the multiple benefits our parks and open spaces have to offer. These include:

• Opportunities to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and promote the health and wellbeing benefits of parks and open spaces
• Opportunities to improve provision of services to nature and contribute to the Local Nature Partnership’s doubling nature ambition
• Opportunities to improve the quality of new and existing spaces and create community resilience
• Opportunities to increase resources to parks and open spaces for both new and existing communities and respond to growth

During the projects co-design phase Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Future Parks have engaged with a huge number of stakeholders from the voluntary sector, health sector, private sector, local government, academia, nature and conservation, community groups, friend of groups, parks practitioners, and volunteers. Whilst we recognise that we all use and look after our parks in different ways, we have a common cause in seeking to use our parks to support people’s health and wellbeing, bring communities closer together, and bring people and nature closer together. This shared interest and common cause unites us as a collective to work together to manage our parks and open spaces for generations to come.

Parks are good for us

Jyoti Atri, Director of Public Health for Cambridgeshire County and Peterborough City Council also delivered a key note speech on the importance of our parks and open spaces for people’s health and wellbeing. She also highlighted the challenges that we need to overcome to enhance the evidence-base exploring the impact of access to parks and open spaces for health and wellbeing.

Parks are importance spaces that enable people to keep physically fit from increased lower level leisure activities such as walking and cycling, to higher level fitness and sports activities and everything in between. It is well established that an increase in physical activity results in improved health outcomes. Nevertheless, more research is needed to understand the impact of access and proximity to green space on levels of physical activity.

Parks and open spaces are also important for people’s mental health and wellbeing and provide spaces for communities to come together. There is strong evidence that exercising outdoors has added benefits in terms of improved mental health and wellbeing. In addition, children’s play spaces have increasingly shown to help children improve their physical, mental, and social skills.

There is good evidence suggesting that people living in more deprived areas overall have less access to good quality green space. However, case studies have demonstrated the challenges of reaching out to those target groups and non-users who stand to gain the most from the benefits of increased access and use of parks and open spaces. Access to good quality green space has been linked to reduced health inequalities and reduces the negative impacts of noise pollution, flood risk, and heat islands. Good planning and maintenance of parks and open spaces is necessary in order to realise the benefits of these spaces to people’s health and wellbeing.

Good growth means delivering quality green space

Rebecca Britton Urban and Civics Regional Director of Communications delivered a keynote presentation on her work with the Natural Cambridgeshire Developing with Nature Forum thinking about how new green space developments form part of delivering nature recovery, climate change resilience, and providing good quality green space for communities.

Natural Cambridgeshire’s Doubling Nature ambition is to increase the area of green space provision in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough from 8.5% to 17%. Natural Cambridgeshire aim to build investment in six priority landscapes across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and work with local communities to empower them to lead on their own nature recovery ambitions in their local spaces. For more information about this work check out the Natural Cambridgeshire website and their Natural Recovery Tool Kits.

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough is one of the fastest growing places in the UK with the county’s population estimated to increase from 623,000 in 2011 to 767,000 by 2031. This poses a challenge to developers around how to deliver quality green space that takes into consideration projected population increases. This challenge also poses as an opportunity to explore how we can grow well, make development greener, and ensure that development plays a part in helping to connect Cambridgeshire and Peterborough’s natural landscape.

Delivering sustainably and ensuring that green and blue space is delivered in a sustainable way requires partnership working to bring together technical skills and expertise and connect this up with the broader set of priorities in a way that brings nature recovery closer to the fore. For example, exploring the potential of urban greening or to deliver biodiversity net gain in new developments.

Delivering sustainably also means ensuring you achieve good access to parks and open spaces for all, engage with the local community in delivering and maintaining the green space, engage in place-making, and demonstrate financial as well as social and environmental value. All of these pose unique challenges. Long-term maintenance in particular is an important challenge to overcome. The question of who is responsible for managing a local community’s green space in the long term is a strong factor driving decisions early on regarding the development of a new green space. Overcoming these challenges will form a core part of how green spaces are managed in the future.

Population increase will also impact existing spaces, as well as new. It is therefore important to bring in investment to support local green spaces for new and expanding communities and for developers to support local communities by signposting and informing new residents of the available green spaces in their local area.

Our parks are good, but they could do so much more for us

Finally, Tony Juniper, Chair of Natural England, sent a video message to attendees to spread the message on the importance of parks and open spaces and the potential to provide services to nature as well as local communities. You can listen to Tony’s message by clicking the video link.