Parks maintenance in a world of new austerity – the challenges we face

Paul Rabbitts, chair of the Parks Management Association looks at the challenges facing those who maintain our parks

As the current chair of the Parks Management Association, I have many conversations with colleagues across the sector who work in parks and open spaces. Within Local Government, the charitable sector, trusts, volunteer groups, we manage among us all, over 27,000 parks. We face incredibly growing challenges in our sector.
    
In 2016, the previous ‘State of the UK Public Parks’ report was published by the Heritage Lottery Fund. That report identified that there was a need for central government, local authorities and a variety of partners to work together to address the problem of declining budgets, and the impact of the loss of finance on the quality, availability and future sustainability of the UK’s parks. In the most recent 2021 ‘State of the UK Public Parks’ report, published by APSE, they are disappointed to have to repeat many of the warnings made five years ago. Funding for our parks is once again at a tipping point with the loss of parks funding in further decline from £500 million lost between 2010 and 2016 to a further £190 million in 2021. A total of £690 million over the past decade.
    
Whilst this report reflects on initiatives to stimulate parks, APSE finds that continued austerity measures have not been ameliorated by central government support, which has amounted to sporadic and small-scale grants to support initiatives such as ‘pocket parks’ and small renovation projects or the recent Levelling Up Fund for parks (£85,000 awarded to a number of authorities with defined deficiencies). In many cases, funding can only be accessed by costly and inefficient bidding systems, which take little account of local need. Therefore, the financing of urban parks has continued to be woefully inadequate for local authorities, who manage around 85 per cent of the UK’s urban parks.

Decline in standards
This has affected how we now manage and maintain our parks and open spaces. Many of my colleagues who recently assessed several sites across England were appalled by the significant decline in standards – mowing regimes affected, derelict and on occasions, unsafe play areas, footpaths full of potholes, overflowing litter bins, buildings boarded up. The cuts have been severe, and we are led to believe that we are about to enter a recession like never before.

Pandemic
Yet parks were the saving grace to many of us during the recent global pandemic, valued by communities and even publicly by politicians. So how is the sector facing up to yet another period of new austerity? Many organisations who represent the wider sector are working hard in raising the need for more funding to central government, including the Parks Management Association, Fields in Trust, Keep Britain Tidy, Green Flag Award, Grounds Management Association, and the Landscape Institute, along with others. Little funding is forthcoming, and this is unlikely to change soon. Park managers are being innovative in the way they operate. In many places, mowing regimes are being relaxed which benefits wildlife. Lancaster City Council has recently adopted a Grassland Management Strategy which others are now looking at more closely. Cost saving but also beneficial to the environment. Park managers are being more commercial in the way they operate, with businesses who operate in parks having to pay their way – cafes, fitness instructors, sports clubs, and other organisations. Car parking charges are often introduced, and visitors almost expect to pay to park their car these days. There is a greater emphasis on self-management with many councils having asset transferred such facilities as bowling greens, allotments and in some cases, pitch management and maintenance to volunteer groups or community organisations.

Technology
The use of technology in parks management and operations is becoming more common. The concept of SmartParks is not new, but gradually we are seeing such introductions as Wi-Fi in parks, charging points, bins with sensors, solar powered compactors, and irrigation systems that are automated which react automatically to soil conditions and moisture. Saughton Park is Edinburgh’s first green-powered park. By combining a micro-hydro scheme to generate electricity and ground source heat pumps to generate heat, it utilises its natural assets in a sensitive way to decarbonise its energy demand and reduce its energy bills. Greenspace Scotland described Saughton Park as embodying the newly emerging model of a ‘low carbon park’. The development and design teams, together with technical partners, explored the potential of different green energy options. The utilisation of Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) technology using electricity from a microhydro scheme sited on the Water of Leith emerged as the most viable solution and was included in the masterplan to cut the park’s energy bills over the long-term. Initially, there was the potential to provide heat to other buildings around the park and connect the GSHP into an existing District Heat Network serving the local area.

Climate change
Climate change is impacting on us all, and this is affecting how we also manage parks and open spaces. The hot summer of 2022 and the subsequent drought saw many green spaces turned into scorched earth landscapes, dust bowls and much of our horticulture struggling. Climate change is now with us, and we are seriously having to look at how we mange these areas going forward. This will include diversifying landscapes, changing maintenance regimes, selecting plants and trees that will tolerate these changes as well as looking at how visitors use these open spaces.
    
These are all significant challenges that the sector must embrace, or we lessen the value of these important spaces for our future generations. To do this, we must work together with a coordinated voice, providing the evidence, lobbying, raising our profile, innovating and to fly the flag for parks and open spaces.