Park services ‘need £500m funding boost’

The government has been warned that council park services require a £500m boost after a report revealed the financial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

A Local Government Association study, co-funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, focused on six council case studies and found that the loss of external income ranged from £87,000 to £8.8m, despite the rising popularity of parks throughout the pandemic.

Paul O'Brien, chief executive of the Association for Public Service Excellence (Apse), told LGC there has been “a real renaissance in parks” in 2020, but that with the financial impact of Covid and significant cuts made to park spending since 2010, an injection of £500m across park services was vital.

He added: “The government has occasionally put forward ideas like pocket parks - they throw £10m at it, but it’s a £500m problem. That's great at that moment in time but come back in 18 months. If you have no revenue budget to maintain that, it’s been a complete waste of money.”

He added that the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government “would argue wrongly that they give plenty of money to local government, but it gets spent on other things like social care and all that sort of thing. Parks are very much the poor relation, in all of that".

The LGA report found that key sources of lost income included sponsorship opportunities, outdoor events, car parking charges and visitor attractions, which ceased or were closed during the lockdown periods.

Mr O’Brien said that in 2017-18, on average around 50% of the revenue budget for parks services came through commercial income, fees and charges from wider activities that parks did, adding: “You can't continuously rely on innovation, entrepreneurship, commercialization of facilities. Ultimately, in order to get back on a level footing, there needs to be an increased grant that flows through the system back to parks through local authority budgets.”

The LGA report also found that the impact of lost volunteer contributions to park services over the lockdown periods ranged from £12,000 to £1.56m across the six case studies.

Wayne Priestley, principal advisor at Apse, said 90% of parks in the UK have friends’ groups, many of which rely heavily on volunteers.

“A lot of the friends’ groups actually generate a lot of income either through putting events on, applying for grants, or they bring in money in themselves,” he told LGC. “They are crucial in helping local authorities maintain the quality and standards in parks and to link into the community as well. You lose that link, you've got real problems.”

Of the six councils reviewed, the report revealed Leeds City Council was hardest hit with a total annual loss of income forecast at £8.8m and a loss of up to 126,282 volunteer hours. Walsall MBC followed, forecasting a total annual loss of external income at £120,500, with 13,400 volunteer hours lost.

Oliver Butler (Con), portfolio holder for clean and green at Walsall MBC, was more optimistic than the picture painted by the report, telling LGC that while “it’s not quite business as normal”, activity was still going on.

He added: “I'm relatively positive for the future. The narrative is not that it's collapsed, and no one's doing anything, but that's very much not the case at all.”

He said that despite volunteer hours lost, volunteers have collected thousands of bags of litter, and added: “Obviously, like all councils we’re having to make savings. But I think we're more resilient than the report made out.”

The MHCLG has been contacted for comment.