Victory for the MoS as Government pledges £13m to Britain’s parks

THE Government today pledges a £13 million cash injection to help improve Britain’s parks.

In a victory for The Mail on Sunday’s Save Our Parks Campaign, Communities Secretary James Brokenshire has ordered that funds be made available immediately so that local authorities can buy new play equipment, spruce up tired green spaces and start creating 200 smaller ‘pocket parks’.

Mr Brokenshire said: ‘I want to commend The Mail on Sunday for the campaign to highlight the importance of parks because they are something that certainly matter to me. Our parks are precious and we need to protect them.

‘We will seek to get this funding out quickly to local authorities to give them the boost they need to make improvements to parks.’

Cash- strapped councils have slashed funding for parks by £15 million in the past two years, resulting in play areas being closed at a rate of almost two a week and hundreds of sites being sold off to housing developers.

Thousands of readers, celebrities and MPs have rallied behind our demand for action to stop the destruction and also to improve the maintenance of surviving parks.

Mr Brokenshire refused to commit to the ring-fencing of funds to force local authorities to spend at least £30 per household each year looking after green spaces. Instead, he said it was the responsibility of councils to use funds to ‘deliver services in ways that recognise the importance of parks’.

The £13 million package includes £9.7 million to ‘ maintain, protect and increase recreational spaces’ and £1.2 million for a project by the National Trust and the National Lottery Heritage Fund to foster ideas on how to better fund parks.

The Government’s ‘pocket parks’ programme, which seeks to create hundreds of new small parks around the country, will get a further £2.75 million.

Campaigners welcomed the cash boost but also urged Ministers to go further. Chris Worman, who advises the Government’s Parks Action Group, said: ‘ Without the Save Our Parks campaign I don’t think we would have got this far.’

Allison Ogden- Newton, chief executive of Keep Britain Tidy, said: ‘While this money is welcome, we need to look at ways to ensure that our parks get the investment they need year in, year out.’

Alison McCann, of Fields In Trust, a charity that works to protect green spaces from developers, said: ‘This funding will go some way to maintaining and improving the parks most in need. While the direction of travel is positive, there is still a concern that parks without legal protection are vulnerable to disposal for development.’

And Dave Morris, chairman of the National Federation Of Parks And Green Spaces, added: ‘ The Government is finally waking up to the funding crisis.’