ALAN TITCHMARSH: WHEN MONEY’S TIGHT PARKS ARE LAST THINGS TO CUT
BR I TA I N ’ S public parks are the envy of the world. From the grandest metropolitan spaces to the modestly provincial, they are a magnificent tribute to earlier generations who recognised that everyone living in towns and cities should, regardless of their financial circumstances, have a patch of our green and pleasant land within walking distance of their homes.
Yet, after centuries at the heart of our lives – Hyde Park was opened to the public by Charles I in 1637 – parks and public gardens up and down the country are under serious threat.
As many as three quarters of councils are cutting back on maintenance, with further damaging savings to come.
Children’s play areas are vanishing, lawns are untended and flowerbeds have been removed from hundreds of sites, all in the name of saving money. It is a reckless false economy, and one that will have disastrous results.
I have more reason than most to love the parks and open spaces that are our birthright.
My childhood was shaped by the Riverside Gardens that run along the banks of the Wharfe in Ilkley, a wonderful recreation ground, but with flower beds, too.
It was Ilkley’s parks department that gave me my first job as an apprentice, a solid horticultural training and the first important step on the way to life as a professional gardener. Even back then I got huge satisfaction watching young and old alike, rich and poor, enjoy the fruits of our labours.
So I wholeheartedly back The Mail on Sunday’s campaign to highlight the growing menace to the very existence of our public parks as we know them.
Parks and public gardens are the lungs of towns and cities, the breathing spaces we so desperately need both in summer and winter. But all too often they are taken for granted by those responsible for their funding.
PARKS are seen as a luxury, an easy target in times of economic pressure, low-hanging fruit when it comes to money-saving cuts.
As a result, they are ceasing to be the delightful, lifeenhancing pocket landscapes we once knew and are instead declining into overgrown wildernesses filled with litter and dog mess.
One in three parks no longer has staff on site. Once neglected, they become a magnet for drug users and those with darker motives. Mothers and fathers become fearful of visiting with their children. In short, a civic amenity becomes a frightening no-go area.
The sheer scale of the cutbacks is bewildering. Since 2016, more than 200 local authorities have cut their parks budgets.
Newcastle Cit y Council has slashed its parks budget by 97 per cent and handed over their running to volunteers. Bristol Council made a similar move earlier this year. Sunderland has cut more than £ 750,000 in the past two years. Edinburgh has slashed £860,000.
Torquay has paved over flower beds. In Sidcup, Kent, the council is planning to build houses on Old Farm Park. And almost all councils expect to make further cuts within the next five years.
It is a dismal prospect. When campaigners say we are at a tipping point, they are right.
Of course there must be spending priorities, particularly in these difficult economic times.
We need a health service that is properly funded and one which is capable of dealing with an ageing population. We need schools that are well equipped, based on a sound collective ethos and staffed with qualified teachers. We want to live in cities, towns and villages where we can feel safe, where we can sleep soundly in our beds.
No one would argue with these three basic tenets. But to use them as an excuse for destroying our parks is not just short-sighted, it is plain wrong. It does not take the mind of a Nobel Laureate to realise that gardens, parks and open spaces impinge directly on those ‘big three’ concerns of health, education and law and order. You don’t have to be a genius to see that prevention is so much better than cure.
Fresh air, for example, is evidently good for our health, while life confined amid polluted towns and cities, where there is little opportunity to breathe clean air, demonstrably leads to sickness. A lack of open space saps our energy and opens the door to mental illness and depression.
The trees, shrubs and hedges in our parks and public gardens trap pollution and allow us to breathe more easily. Beds of flowers inspire joy. In short, a walk in the park will send you home with a spring in your step. Good air in your lungs gives you the impetus to battle on.
It is blindingly obvious that open spaces play an important part in reducing pressure on the National Health Service. Our parks and gardens are not a drain on hard-pressed resources – they are saving the NHS millions.
Then there is education, which must surely include an understanding of the landscape in which we live and a feeling of responsibility for its future. Parks and gardens have a role to play here, too, allowing children to watch the passing of the seasons, to see birds, bees and butterflies and to observe the part they play in the overall health of the planet.
Conservation is not just about cutting down on the amount of plastic we use, it is also about knowing how pl ants and ani mals l i ve together in the heart of our towns and cities.
Law and order is not just about having more police officers on the streets. It is also about preventing frustration, about an opportunity to let off steam.
While I cannot claim that public parks will prevent armed robberies, they certainly boost community spirit t h r o u g h a l l o wi n g competitive sports and games, as well as jogging, walking and other forms of exercise.
One problem with those in authority – and with modern life – is that they like things that can be quantified and measured, boxes that can be ticked and quotas that can be achieved. Preventative work is hard to quantify, but is essential all the same.
It is for these and many other reasons that governments, both national and local, need to wake up to the all-too-obvious benefits of well-maintained parks and open spaces instead of regarding them as eminently expendable.
Far from being the first things that should be sacrificed in times of economic restraint, public parks and gardens should be the very last to go.
Such a cavalier attitude to our urban green spaces is a sure recipe for an impoverished future.
And it is a crying shame.
My childhood was shaped by the local recreation ground – and the park gave me my first steps to being a gardener