Key information
Publication type: General
Publication date:
Contents
For decades, evidence has been building on the value of parks and green spaces in tackling complex challenges in modern society and their multiplicity of positive impacts: on economic, environmental, social and health outcomes. However, this evidence has failed to translate into the sustained investment needed to fully realise the potential of parks and green spaces.
The Mayor is committed to realising the full potential of parks and green spaces and supporting boroughs, other landowners and the 700+ friends’ groups, all of whom want to secure a strong and vibrant future for these vital spaces. That is why he established the London Green Spaces Commission (LGSC) to recommend how boroughs can be helped to develop, strengthen and secure their parks services.
The Commission, chaired by Shirley Rodrigues, Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, met six times from April 2019 to March 2020. Commissioners invited oral and written evidence, undertook research and held workshops with borough officers. The report focuses on the two most practical and deliverable actions that the Commissioners believe will enable a major step-change:
Recommendation 1: Establish and resource a Centre of Excellence to champion and secure investment for London’s public parks and green spaces.
Calling on those organisations responsible for securing a better future for London’s parks and green spaces (including the Mayor, London Councils and the London Boroughs) to create a cross-sector Centre of Excellence to drive innovation and promote best practice and to establish a Green Space Investment Fund to sustain this.
Recommendation 2: Establish a Future Greenspace Skills Programme.
Commissioners recommend that the Mayor and London Councils should convene organisations involved with green space management and training provision in London to develop a Future Greenspace Skills Programme and identify innovation projects that will lead to an expansion in the ways in which the greenspace workforce of the present and the future is trained and managed. The Skills for Londoners Board should integrate the green spaces sector’s needs into the Mayor’s strategic work on skills and the Green New Deal.