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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what methodology his Department uses to determine the number and proportion of people who have access to a good quality (a) green and (b) blue space within 15 minutes' walk of their home.

The methodology and data we currently use on the number and proportion of people with access to greenspace is taken from Natural England’s Green Infrastructure (GI) Framework analysis.

Natural England’s analyses of the total population in England living in close proximity of greenspace are based on the GI Framework’s Accessible Greenspace Standards which use buffers (straight-line distances) between home and greenspace and include three greenspace criteria:

• People living within 200m of a doorstep greenspace of at least 0.5ha
• People living within 300m of a local natural greenspace of at least 2ha
• People living within 1km of a neighbourhood natural greenspace of at least 10ha

When considered together, these three most local Accessible Greenspace Standards buffers allow us to form a composite picture of access to different sizes of greenspace within a straight-line distance of 1km from home.

Natural England’s G3 Indicator report shows that as of October 2021, the proportions of the total population in England living within Accessible Greenspace Standards ‘criteria’ (straight line distances from the boundary of the greenspaces) are:

• 1 in 3 people live within 200 metres of a doorstep greenspace of at least 0.5 hectares.

• 1 in 4 people live within 300 metres of a local natural greenspace of at least 2 hectares.

• 1 in 2 people live within 1 km of a neighbourhood natural greenspace of at least 10 hectares.

Our Environmental Improvement Plan commitment to ensure everyone lives within 15 minutes’ walk of a green or blue space focuses on proximity to these spaces from home. Our data gathering therefore focuses on this, rather than by parliamentary constituency.

We are currently working to establish a robust baseline of walkability to green and blue space, including working with NE and with the Rivers Trust to create data on blue space access points. In August we will publish an official statistic in development on walkability within England to the nearest green space. This will use network analysis to calculate travel time/ distance rather than straight-line distances, and enhanced use of data on the rights-of-way network. For full details see https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/announcements/access-to-green-space-in-england.