Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to protect access to (a) green spaces and (b) Greenways in (i) Huddersfield constituency and (ii) West Yorkshire.

The Government recognises the importance of providing access to the outdoors for people’s health and wellbeing and is working to ensure this is safe and appropriate. We committed in our Environmental Improvement Plan to work across government to help ensure that everyone lives within 15 minutes’ walk of a green or blue space.

The Government is delivering a number of policies to protect access to green spaces including in urban areas. Examples of these include:

• Delivering the £9 million Levelling Up Parks Fund to improve green space in more than 100 disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the UK.
• The launch of the Green Infrastructure Framework: Principles and Standards for England in January 2023 which shows what good green infrastructure looks like and will help local authorities, developers and communities to improve provision in their area
• Local Nature Recovery Strategies will identify locations where action for nature recovery would be particularly beneficial, encouraging the creation of more green spaces, including in urban areas
• Implementing a number of rights of way reforms which will streamline the process for adding new or lost footpaths to the rights of way network.

Local highway authorities are responsible for the management and maintenance of existing public rights of way and are required to keep a Rights of Way Improvement Plan to plan improvements to the rights of way network in their area. This must include an assessment of the local rights of way including the condition of the network.

In the West Yorkshire area specifically, as part of its work to deliver England’s Nature Recovery Network, Natural England is working with a range of partners in the iconic upland, rural and urban landscapes in West Yorkshire to create a shared vision for nature recovery that will underline the cultural and environmental links between the industrial heartland of West Yorkshire and the moors that help to define them.

In the South Pennine Moors Natural England is working with public and private finance, stakeholders and landowners with the aim of creating more habitat mosaics and dynamic sites, helping to build resilience for species that are likely to be impacted by climate change and improve natural flood management, ensuring that environmental and economic sustainability go hand in hand.

Utilising Green Infrastructure and Biodiversity Net Gain opportunities, Natural England is also aiming to build in green corridors and steppingstones leading into Bradford. Local communities are being engaged in the project, providing opportunities to connect the people of Bradford and West Yorkshire with their surrounding wild places, and encouraging greater sustainable access.