The pioneering strategic partnership, which was agreed at the city council’s Cabinet meeting on Friday 19th March 2021, will protect all of their parks and green spaces in perpetuity, ensuring they can never be sold off or built on. The Council will work with green space charity Fields in Trust and Friends groups to protect these green spaces for sport, nature and play and with a further commitment to ensure every resident is within a 10-minute walk of a protected park or green space.
This is an important decision because provision of local parks is not a statutory service, meaning local authorities have no obligation to provide them for residents. Figures from Fields in Trust’s Green Space Index show just 5.9% of Britain’s publicly accessible local green space provision is legally protected. The onset of the COVID pandemic has shown just how important quality green spaces are for communities and for the environment. We applaud the hard work of all the inspirational and dedicated Friends group volunteers who pushed for this to happen including Chrisie Byrne (Friends of Walton Hall Park and Chair of Liverpool parks friends forum) and Pauline Roy (Save Calderstones Park).
Liverpool Council’s commitment ensures the city’s residents will always have access to the positive health, wellbeing, community and environmental benefits of green space close to home. Hopefully this pioneering partnership will be the first of many across he country.
- The Fields in Trust website has more detail on the scheme; including an interactive map of the first phase of protections, full press release and background from all the principal partners
- See a short clip from acting mayor of Liverpool announcing the commitment
- BBC news online piece “Liverpool parks to be protected from development“
- Local newspaper Liverpool Echo coverage “All of Liverpool’s parks to be protected with building on them banned“