Funding for Parks

Justin Madders Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2023 Westminster Hall

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Mr Pritchard. I shall begin by welcoming the Minister. This is our first outing together. Maybe we will have a few more before we go our separate ways again, but I do not think this is something we will fall out about.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) on his excellent speech about the importance of parks. He articulated very well how important they are and how, during the pandemic, we all came to a greater understanding of their importance. He set out the historical context as well, with many wealthy benefactors often the progenitors of local parks. Local communities have worked together and, indeed, local authorities have also done a great deal of work over many years to secure and preserve those open spaces that otherwise might well have been concreted over.

I thank the right hon. Member for mentioning Birkenhead Park. It is not quite in my constituency, but it is not that far away. It would be remiss of me not to mention some of the excellent parks in Ellesmere Port and Neston. We have Whitby Park, Rivacre Valley, Stanney Wood and Lees Lane, which are all important open spaces. They are often kept going by friends groups and volunteers, who do a really important job in covering the sometimes difficult job of local authorities in maintaining those spaces to the levels we would like to see. The right hon. Member for Islington North has referred to that and I will come back to it shortly.

The right hon. Member referred to the Select Committee reports, and the 2017 report in particular clearly spells out the health and economic benefits that parks and open spaces can have. The report quoted studies that found that, every year,

“green spaces in England contribute £2.2 billion to public health.”

It was also mentioned that the UK Natural Environment Assessment found that caring for ecosystems had the potential—I use the word “potential” advisedly—to add £30 billion a year to the UK’s economy. The Select Committee also noted the benefits that accrued to local areas in terms of attracting investment and securing jobs, referring particularly to Edinburgh City Council’s social return investment model as proof of the basis for economic benefits and how it was concluded from that scheme in particular that every £1 invested in parks resulted in a £12 return in benefits delivered. That is not something that any of us can ignore.

Both the right hon. Member for Islington North and the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Sarah Dyke) have spelled out clearly that there are many positive impacts in our communities from parks and green spaces. It is perhaps counterintuitive, possibly disappointing and almost certainly frustrating that our general impression is that parks have been undervalued in the past decade.

The Association for Public Service Excellence noted in its “State of UK Public Parks 2021” report that in the past decade, funding for parks from local government has collapsed. It estimated that since 2010, parks have lost £690 million-worth of funding, with parks now making up less than 3% of local authority budgets on average. With constricted budgets, staff maintaining parks have also had to be cut, which is where the important work of friends groups comes in. The APSE survey found that 32% of local authorities have had to make frontline cuts to staff during this period. Sadly, those cuts were not even distributed evenly across the UK. We know that 87% of the UK’s most deprived councils have had their spending cut since 2010, compared with only 58% of those in the most affluent areas. Given what we know about the importance of parks in driving down health inequalities, the fact that that funding cut has disproportionately affected those areas with less economic power is a cause for double concern. We all know that the austerity enforced on local authorities since 2010 has had a huge impact on their ability to deliver. We know that their spending power fell by almost 20% between 2009-10 and 2019-20. Despite a partial recovery in recent times, spending power is still more than 10% below what it was before. That has resulted in many local authorities really struggling.

We know that there are huge, increased pressures on local authorities, particularly in children’s services and social care, and more pressure is on the way. It is not surprising, with the financial pressures faced by local authorities, that there is a temptation for them to monetise some of these assets a little more. I do not criticise them for that—we know that they are in a difficult position—but we must be alive to the risks that brings: restricting access to all, reducing the quality of the environment and ultimately undermining the very essence of what parks are meant to be there for. The right hon. Member for Islington North talked about how Finsbury Park can be out of action for several weeks at a time. I agree with him that there is no problem with using parks for these events if they raise funds, but a balance must be struck between the local authority’s ability to use the park for those events and the rights of other users to enjoy the benefits of the park.

One other way that the pressure on local authorities and open spaces has manifested itself is through the introduction of estate management fees, whereby management companies simply adopt the work that the local authorities used to undertake, leaving homeowners having to pay twice for exactly the same services. I have said before that unless we get a proper grip on estate management fees, they will become a new payment protection insurance scandal. What do we say to residents who pay additional fees but then see non-residents, who have not paid the fees to clean up and maintain the park, using their facilities? How long before residents demand that open spaces are open only to those who have paid management fees? Be in no doubt: this issue will continue to corrode community cohesion unless we find a compelling answer to these questions. The Minister knows that I will come back to this repeatedly, because I do not think that we have really understood the scale of the issue just yet.

The concerns articulated by the right hon. Member for Islington North about the need to protect and preserve our parks and open spaces are very much a live issue. I look forward to hearing the Government’s response from the Minister, particularly to the Select Committee recommendations that we have heard about.