For many April has marked the beginning of a gradual easing of national lockdown restrictions and has enabled friends and families to come together for the first time since Christmas for a socially distanced catch up.

Whilst the importance of social interaction and access to nature for mental health and wellbeing is now common knowledge, the challenges that accompany increased use of parks and open green spaces has also been brought to the forefront this month. We are all familiar with the well-publicised images of excessive quantities of litter left behind as remnants of people’s newfound freedoms.

A key ambition of projects, such as Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Future Parks, is to address unequal access to nature and enable greater access to parks and green spaces. However, as recent events have so clearly demonstrated, this cannot be sustainable unless accompanied by positive messaging and conscious efforts towards pro-environmental behaviour change.

Keep Britain Tidy launched a campaign in July last year launched a ‘Love Parks’ campaign to encourage people to behave respectfully in their parks. They found that more than half of the Country’s parks have had to invest more resources to activities such as cleaning up litter, emptying bins and maintaining public order. They advise a messaging approach focused on values of community, care and citizenship. Our communities’ value their parks and public open spaces and only by engaging and working with communities can we sustainably maintain our parks and open spaces for generations to come.