Recreation Spaces: Greater London

(asked on 5th September 2023) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure the preservation of green spaces within (a) Enfield North constituency, (b) the London Borough of Enfield and (c) London.


Answered by
Trudy Harrison Portrait
Trudy Harrison
This question was answered on 12th September 2023

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 £9m Levelling Up Parks Fund to improve green space in over 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.

In Enfield, Natural England is working with the Council in developing its local plan to create high quality places that tackle climate change, the nature emergency, inequalities, and promote health and well-being. This will also help Enfield to embed Natural England’s Green Infrastructure Standards into the plan and supporting documents.

In addition Enfield has been awarded £500,000 from the Landscape Recovery Scheme to support schemes to restore nature, reduce flood risks and boost biodiversity include creating hundreds of hectares of woodlands and grassland, wetlands and restore rivers and expanding the Enfield Chase Restoration Project. Natural England are also working with the London Borough of Enfield on a new Countryside Stewardship scheme.

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