Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to build on the promotion of connecting with nature as part of Mental Health Week 2021 in its future work on mental health.

Our “COVID-19 mental health and wellbeing recovery action plan” recognises the important role that access to green spaces plays in supporting our mental health, and it outlines a range of work carried out by Government departments to increase access to green spaces.

This includes through testing green social prescribing through the Preventing and tackling mental ill health through green social prescribing project. This £5.77 million cross-Government project will test green social prescribing in seven sites, run national research work to understand scalability, and deliver a robust project evaluation. The project will work with communities disproportionately affected by COVID-19, and is running from October 2020 until April 2023. It will increase our understanding of how nature-based activities such as community gardening projects and green exercise can meet the needs of people with, or at risk of developing, mental ill health and help to inform future policy development.