KidsOutdoors

Nearer nature

At their ‘Going Wild’ national conference Natural England, the public body committed to conserving and enhancing the natural environment, challenged local authorities, planners and developers to increase the amount of green areas available on people’s doorsteps.

Speaking at the conference, Sir Martin Doughty, Chair of Natural England. said: ‘Wherever you live in England you should be able to access ‘green space’ whether it is a local park, a wildlife garden or even an area of woodland close to where you live.’

Natural England will promote a series of standards to ensure that people, wherever they live, can relax, play, exercise or just escape in their neighbourhood green space. Their Accessible Natural Greenspace Standard says that everyone home should be within 300 m of an accessible natural green space of at least two hectares, which is equivalent in size to two football pitches.

Sir Martin continued: ‘These are standards that we all – including national and local government, planners and developers – should aspire to for new developments and when redeveloping and regenerating existing sites.

‘Entire generations who grew up in the 80s and 90s became increasingly separated from the natural environment. Natural England wants to reverse this trend particularly for new generations. The success of these standards would ensure that care and concern for the environment is passed onto the next generation, safeguarding it for the future,’

Natural England is funding a number of pilot projects, in partnership with a wide range of environmental and community organisations to demonstrate what can be achieved when local communities are supported with a little expertise to get projects started and with relatively small sums of money.

One such area is Hilly Fields in Lewisham, south London. There the local community is growing a wildflower meadow, a biodiversity rich hedge and planting bulbs. Interpretation boards and signage have been put in so that people, especially local school children, can learn more about their local environment. A ‘bird champion’ scheme ensures that there is always food to attract the birds.

Natural England’s Accessible Natural Greenspace Standard also say that each home should also have access to:

• at least one accessible 20 hectare site within 2 km
• at least one accessible 100 hectare site within 5 km
• at least one accessible 500 hectare site within 10 km

What do you think?

Do you agree? How far do you live from your nearest green space? Is yours under threat from developers? Write a blog about what your area is like or upload a photo of your nearest green space.

For further information on the Accessible Natural Greenspace Standard visit Natural England’s website