Parks and Green Spaces Strategy 2022 to 2032

Foreword

Introduction

Leeds Parks and Green Spaces Strategy

This strategy sets out a vision for Leeds City Council’s Parks and Countryside Service, and the actions that we will undertake to deliver that vision over the next 10 years. It focusses on how local public green spaces such as parks, nature reserves and cemeteries, and related facilities (such as playgrounds, tennis courts, animal attractions, footpaths and cafes) will be managed going forward.

In recent times, and especially during the coronavirus pandemic, people in the UK have increasingly come to recognise the value of urban public green space, particularly its huge benefits to health and wellbeing, wildlife and the environment. A parliamentary inquiry into public parks in 2017 concluded that:

We are keen to ensure that public green spaces in Leeds continue to deliver such benefits and this strategy will help achieve that.

The priorities set out below have emerged from a combination of public consultation, national and local research and other local plans and strategies (see References section below). 

Leeds City Council, Parks and Countryside Service

Sites and facilities:

• 4,000 hectares of green space
• 857 km of public rights of way
• 24 cemeteries and 3 crematoria
• 7 major parks
• 63 community parks
• 156 nature conservation sites
• 101 allotment sites
• 174 playgrounds
• 200 football pitches
• 90 tennis courts
• 62 bowling greens
• 73 outdoor gyms and multi-use games areas
• 2 zoos
• 1 farm
• 1 plant nursery
• 10 cafes and shops
• Over 6 million trees
  

Natural capital:

• Leeds parks contribute £598m per year in health benefits
• Health and wellbeing services deliver on average £21 per park visit.
• £831k: Value of CO2 removed by Leeds parks each year
  

Communities:

• 45 million adult visits a year
• 88% of park users describe spending time in parks as either ‘essential’ or ‘important’ to their quality of life
• Over 650 public events in parks a year
• Over 2,000 volunteers a year help to care for green spaces in Leeds
  

Vision

Our vision is to provide the best parks and green spaces in the UK

As residents will know, we already have fantastic parks and green spaces in Leeds, with 77% of Leeds Parks Survey respondents describing their last visit to a local park as ‘very pleasant’.

By focussing on the 8 priorities set out below, we believe we can achieve our goal of providing the best parks and green spaces in the UK within the next 10 years.

Priorities

We have set out 8 priorities for the Parks and Countryside service below along with the actions required to deliver them. At times, the actions have benefits that make a significant contribution to more than one of the priorities (for example, supporting walking can benefit both public health and the climate) but we have not repeated them because we wanted to keep the document as succinct as possible.

Quality

Providing high quality parks and green spaces.

Climate and biodiversity

Increasing wildlife and biodiversity and reducing the impact of climate change.

Access for all

Ensuring that parks and green spaces are accessible to everyone.

Culture

Providing exciting, diverse, interesting and enjoyable green spaces that reflect the history and culture of their local communities.

Child-friendly

Providing green spaces that children and teenagers love to visit.

Working with communities

Having a positive, open, helpful and collaborative approach to delivering the Parks and Countryside service.

Financial sustainability

Ensuring that good quality public green space is available for the long term.

Health and wellbeing

Providing a wide range of opportunities for people to get the health benefits of spending time in green spaces.

Quality: 

Providing high quality parks and green spaces

We aim to deliver high quality parks and green spaces as measured by the international Green Flag and local, Leeds Quality Park (LQP) standards. These measures use widely accepted criteria such as ‘welcoming’, ‘clean and well maintained’ and ‘healthy, safe and secure’ to assess the quality of green spaces.

In Leeds, we have been using this approach to assess and improve our community parks for over 10 years and, as a consequence of prioritising in this way, we have significantly increased the quality of our most popular green spaces (with 73% of community parks currently achieving LQP standard, compared to 22% in 2010). 

The reasons we have decided to continue to prioritise quality green spaces are as follows:

• Research by the University of Leeds showed a link between park quality and user satisfaction - residents’ favourite parks are more likely to have passed, than failed, LQP and regular users of LQP parks report higher levels of satisfaction than do regular users of parks that do not achieve the LQP standard.
• Prioritising quality will also help tackle some of the key issues highlighted by our public consultation ahead of producing this strategy, including concerns about maintenance, the quality of parks infrastructure and anti-social behaviour. Research (by CABE Space) has shown that, as the quality of green space increases, the incidence of anti-social behaviour tends to decrease.
• The number one priority for local green spaces identified in the survey of 6,432 local residents undertaken by University of Leeds in 2016 was ‘Keeping Parks Clean’ – this will be addressed through our focus on quality.
• Residents, volunteer groups and local ward councillors recognise the value of this approach and support it.

To provide the resources to get parks to the LQP standard where significant investment is required (e.g. for paths, sports facilities or playgrounds) we will continue to use S106 developers’ contributions where possible. And where such funding is not available (often for inner-city parks, that tend to benefit least from developers’ contributions because there is less space for development in inner city areas) we are keen to establish a ‘strategic investment fund’ to help raise their standards.

As part of this quality aspiration, and to support the delivery of the other priorities in this strategy, we also intend to develop a management plan ‘on a page’ for each community park in consultation with the local community. These plans, set out on two sides of A3, will establish a clear vision for each park and will be used by the council and partners to help us deliver our ‘Best Parks’ vision. The larger, more complex, city parks (like Temple Newsam and Middleton Park) will continue to have full management plans set out in the format required by the Green Flag Award.

In recognition of the fact that the strategy consultation showed that some types of anti-social behaviour (particularly in relation to dogs and litter) are an issue for green space users, we also plan to develop and implement evidence-based approaches to tackling these matters along with key partners, such as Safer Leeds, at sites where such problems are particularly acute.

Lastly, as part of our commitment to quality, we are planning to achieve national standards for our visitor attractions (at Tropical World, Lotherton and Temple Newsam) and for animal welfare at our registered zoos and farm.

Climate and biodiversity: 

Increasing wildlife and biodiversity and reducing the impact of climate change

We aim to provide green spaces that are full of nature and wildlife and that will help reduce the likelihood and impact of climate change. We will do this by planting thousands of trees on our sites every year and by protecting, enhancing and creating other wildlife habitats such as meadows, ponds and hedgerows. 

The main reasons we have decided to prioritise climate and biodiversity are as follows:

• Parks and green spaces in Leeds provide homes, food and connectivity for much-loved wildlife, from more common species like many native birds, butterflies and bluebells to rarer, more threatened species such as glow worms, harvest mice and bats. As green space managers, we believe we have a responsibility to manage our sites in a way that not only protects wild plants and animals but allows them to thrive.
• At a time when wildlife and biodiversity is threatened in the UK and across the globe (g. over 97% of all flower-rich grasslands have been lost in England since the 1930s; 57% of UK butterfly species have declined in abundance since the 1970s and several very common bird species have dramatically declined in numbers - the RSPB have reported that starlings and house sparrows have declined by 71% and 60% respectively since the 1970s), we are keen to do all we can in Leeds to protect and increase our local wildlife. 
• Nature and wildlife are very important to the public – for example, in responses to the consultation on this strategy, nature and wildlife was the most popular response to the questions ‘Why are public parks and green spaces important to you?’ and ‘What do you think the best things about public parks and green spaces in Leeds are?’ And answers themed around implementing a more wildlife/environment/climate-friendly approach to management of our green spaces was the most popular response to the question ‘What positive changes would you like to see in our parks and green spaces over the next 10 years?’
• There is evidence that peoples’ mental wellbeing increases along with the species richness of their environment.
• In 2019, Leeds City Council declared a Climate Emergency and committed to make the city carbon neutral by 2030 as our contribution to achieving no more than a 1.5^oC global temperature increase. The Parks and Countryside service will contribute to this goal by planting 50 hectares of woodland (around 225,000 carbon-absorbing trees) a year for the life of this strategy and beyond.
• As well as trees and other plants absorbing carbon, green spaces will increasingly be required to play a role in mitigating extreme weather events caused by climate change such as flooding and high temperatures (vegetation slows down water flow and rainwater can be captured in ponds and lakes; trees and shrubs can provide much needed shade in hot weather).

We are also keen to provide opportunities for people, particularly children and young adults, to learn about local wildlife, the benefits of green space for the environment (e.g. for climate and clean air) and how they can help look after them, with the aim of ensuring our commitment to biodiversity and climate is sustainable and will be maintained by future generations. We will continue to do this through interpretation (e.g. information signs), education sessions and events and activities such as tree planting, pond dipping and bug hunting.

This priority also includes our aspiration to minimise any negative impact the Parks and Countryside service may have on the environment. We will eliminate the use of peat from our gardening operations so we aren’t damaging rare peatland habitats, minimise pesticide use and continue to implement council-wide efforts to reduce carbon use and air pollution, save energy, minimise waste (particularly single-use plastic) and recycle.

Lastly, we recognise the benefits of local food-growing for the environment, food security and health and wellbeing so we are going to produce a management plan for our allotment sites to ensure they are managed in a way that maximises their potential as a community resource. In addition, we will continue to support local community food-growing projects (such as community orchards) by identifying suitable spaces for them in our green spaces wherever possible.

Access for all:

Ensuring that parks and green spaces are accessible for everyone who wants to use them.

We aim to provide public green spaces that are welcoming and easy to visit so that everyone can use them. We also aim to provide something for everyone, no matter what their interests (which could range from horticulture to tennis, skateboarding to bird watching, running to fishing…and so on) so that everyone can enjoy spending time in our green spaces. 

The reasons we have decided to prioritise ‘access for all’ are:

• Leeds City Council manage parks and green spaces as a public service and, as such, it is important to us to provide facilities for all the people of Leeds, no matter what their physical abilities, backgrounds and interests are. This fits with the Council’s core value of ‘Treating People Fairly.’ Evidence shows that the vast majority of people of all ages, ethnic backgrounds and physical abilities use our parks and we would like to keep it that way!
• Some respondents to the consultation on this strategy told us that they would like physical access to be improved in some locations, with requests including better paths, improved wheelchair access and more benches and toilets.
• By providing shared spaces where a wide range of people can spend time in each other’s company, evidence suggests that public green spaces can help reduce social isolation and improve community cohesion, contributing to one of Leeds City Council’s priorities of creating ‘Safer, stronger communities’.
• Providing accessible parks also contributes to the Council’s goal of making Leeds an ‘Age Friendly City’ and the ‘best city to grow old in’ by providing opportunities for older people to be ‘healthy, active and included’ and making public spaces ‘accessible, safe, clean and welcoming’. In our consultations with older people we have found that their priorities for green spaces are just as varied as those from other age groups (for example, consultation respondents over 65 were very keen on increasing biodiversity, reducing anti-social behaviour and ensuring parks are well maintained) but that they do also comment on access requirements – particularly the need for benches, good quality paths, wheelchair access and car parking for people with disabilities.

In this priority, we are committing to provide good levels of accessibility as a minimum at all our city and community parks and cemeteries and crematoria. We also aim to ensure good quality information about our sites is available on the internet so people can easily find out what’s available and plan their visits. 

At our visitor attractions at Tropical World, Home Farm (at Temple Newsam) and Lotherton, where entry charges are necessary, we will offer concessions to make sure all local residents are able to visit them. We will also work hard to increase the diversity of our workforce with the aim of ensuring our team is representative of the population it serves. 

In light of recent national events highlighting issues with the safety of women and girls in public spaces, we are keen to ensure that no one is excluded from our sites because they don’t feel safe so we are going to work with partners to explore feelings of safety in local parks and green spaces, and identify and implement means to improve safety where appropriate.

Providing ‘something for everyone’ in terms of facilities ranging from specialist gardens to playgrounds, cafés to nature reserves, farm animals to bowling greens (and so on) is a theme throughout this document and is covered under a number of priorities, especially Health and Wellbeing, Child-friendly Leeds and Culture.

Culture:

Providing exciting, diverse, interesting and enjoyable green spaces that reflect the history and culture of their local communities.

We define culture as the distinctive character of a city and its localities, created by what people do there – things like art, music, events, sport, history and science. Our aim is for our parks and green spaces to be cultural hubs – centres of interest, enjoyment and activity that bring communities together and attract visitors from further afield to benefit the economy through tourism. 

We believe that having a good cultural offer makes cities more interesting and exciting places to live in and visit, and that parks and green spaces can contribute to that through their visitor attractions, events, specialist gardens, cafés, historical features, walking and cycling routes, play and sports facilities, education and interpretation etc.

The main reasons we have decided culture should be a priority for the Parks and Countryside service are:

• Culture is a priority in Leeds City Council’s Best Council Plan and we believe parks and green spaces can make a significant contribution to ‘ensuring that culture can be created and experienced by anyone’ because they are local, accessible, free and almost everyone uses them.
• We also think we can contribute to the Council’s goal of ‘enhancing the image of Leeds through major events and attractions’. For example, in 2019 (pre-Covid) our parks hosted two of the biggest events in the city with the Ed Sheeran concerts and Leeds West Indian Carnival attracting over 250,000 people between them. In terms of attractions, Roundhay Park and Temple Newsam come second and third on Trip Advisor’s Top Attractions in Leeds list, hosting over 11 million (adult) visits a year.
• Evidence suggests that good parks can boost the tourist economy of a city - Visit Britain found that, of the 31 million tourists visiting Britain, over a third visit a park or garden.
• Respondents to our consultation on this strategy said that they would like to see more visitor facilities on our sites including more cafés, more art, more cycling routes, more sports facilities and more events and activities.
• The University of Leeds survey of residents revealed that ‘events and activities for local communities’ was a top five priority for residents in relation to parks.
• We believe that making parks and green spaces engaging, exciting and reflective of the communities around them will increase use of them so more people will benefit in terms of health and wellbeing and social cohesion outcomes.

We are committed to sustainably improving and developing a number of visitor attractions in Leeds parks over the next 10 years including creating indoor play facilities at Tropical World and Temple Newsam farm (to improve the winter offer for visitors) and a new visitor hub at Temple Newsam including a ‘learn to ride a bike’ area, new cycling routes and a café based near the golf facilities. We are also planning to continue to improve Wildlife World at Lotherton with the introduction of some exciting new animal species, and to develop an outdoor water play facility in one of our parks. Many readers will be aware that Golden Acre park has some fantastic gardens and plant collections, and we intend to promote the site as Leeds’s own botanical garden in future along with providing more information about the plants and gardens there for those with a keen interest in horticulture, or who just love beautiful places!

As well as developing and improving our visitor facilities, we are aware that we have some really interesting historic features on our sites, and not just at the obvious places like Kirkstall Abbey and Temple Newsam - think Middleton Park with its bell pits and historic railway…or the remnants of the mills in the Meanwood Valley. We are committed to preserving these and telling people about them so they can be understood and appreciated.

Education is also part of the culture priority – we believe that it is key for helping people to get the most from parks and green spaces and ensuring they will be cared for in future – whether it be about the animals in our zoos and farm, the amazing history and heritage of many of our sites, the award winning specialist gardens at places like Roundhay Park, Temple Newsam and Golden Acre Park, or other features of interest such as the war memorials or the geology of Otley Chevin - we are keen to tell people about them through formal school visits, public events and interpretation, and hope that this will increase understanding and enjoyment of these wonderful sites.

Covid restrictions impacted the number of events we could host in our parks in 2020 and 2021 but we look forward to welcoming back hundreds of events ranging from charity fun runs to rock concerts, community galas to food festivals over the next 10 years, particularly in 2023 - the designated year of culture for Leeds!

Child-friendly

Providing green spaces that children and teenagers love to visit so that they can get the health and wellbeing benefits of spending time in them.

As all parents and carers will know, parks and green spaces are absolutely essential when bringing up children – they provide hours of entertainment for young people whilst getting them out in the fresh air, being physically active with friends and family. We aim to make green spaces places that all young people feel safe in and love to visit, as a key contribution to making Leeds a child-friendly city.

The reasons we are planning to prioritise child-friendly parks and green spaces are as follows:

• Following the public consultation on this strategy, we decided to add ‘Child-friendly’ as an extra priority because a significant number of respondents told us that free, outdoor facilities for children and teenagers are important to them when it comes to the future of local parks and green spaces.
• 30% of strategy consultation respondents said that parks and green spaces are important to them because they provide activities for children, and the University of Leeds found that ‘family outings’ are one of the top 5 reasons people visit parks.
• The majority of children access their parks and play areas across the city. A survey of over 17,000 local children and young people in 2017/18 revealed that over 75% of primary school children and 66% of secondary school children had visited a local park or playground in the past four weeks.
• We are aware that, in modern times, there is a temptation for children and young people to stay inside on their computers and that this can be to the detriment of their physical and mental health – for example, cases of obesity and anxiety are rising in under 18s. By providing great parks and green spaces for children and young people we know we can get them outside, being active, having fun and socialising – all things that contribute to reducing these health and wellbeing issues and feelings of social isolation.
• Creating a ‘Child-friendly City’ is a priority in Leeds City Council’s Best Council Plan and we believe we can contribute to the goal of ‘improving social, emotional and mental health and wellbeing in young people’.
• By providing child-friendly parks and green spaces we also believe we can make a significant contribution to the outcomes of ‘Enjoying healthy lifestyles’ and ‘Have fun growing up’ that are set out in the council’s Children and Young Peoples’ plan.
• When the Child-friendly Leeds team consulted over 14,000 local children about what they thought would make Leeds a child-friendly city, 12 ‘wishes’ emerged. They included some that we are keen to contribute to:
  • There are places and spaces to play and things to do, in all areas and open to all
  • Places and spaces where children and young people spend time and play, are free of litter and dog fouling.
  • Children and young people express their views, feel heard and are actively involved in decisions that affect their lives.
• We also believe that by prioritising children and young people we can contribute to the council’s ‘Commitment to Children’s Play’ by providing opportunities for children to play.

We will consult children and young people as well as adults where changes to our green spaces that may affect them are proposed. 

In response to a number of comments in the strategy consultation about provision for teenagers, we will carry out a consultation specifically aimed at this age group to find out how we can make our parks and green spaces more teen-friendly.

As well as the child-friendly developments set out in the Culture priority, we plan to continue to improve opportunities for children to play in our parks and green spaces across the city, so that good quality outdoor play is accessible to all local children.

And we will ensure there is information available online about how children and young people can enjoy our parks and green spaces.

Working with Communities

Having a positive, open, helpful and collaborative approach to delivering the Parks and Countryside service.

We aim to work closely with local communities to deliver great parks and green spaces – using communication and consultation along with community engagement and empowerment to care for parks and green spaces in a collaborative way, because we know that local communities and other partners have a great deal to contribute to the achievement of our goal of providing the best parks and green spaces in the UK.

The reasons that ‘working with communities’ has been chosen as a priority are:

• As a public service we are keen to ensure that service-users are able to get the most from the work that we do, so we aim to provide good, clear information about our facilities and be as helpful as possible in our interactions with the public.
• Public parks and green spaces are there for the benefit of the people of Leeds so it is important that they get a say in how they are managed and developed – that way we can ensure we are providing what users want and need from them.
• We recognise that local people (e.g. in Friends groups), other council departments (e.g. Active Leeds) and organisations outside the council (e.g. Yorkshire Wildlife Trust) have valuable skills, knowledge and experience and that we can achieve a lot more by working with them than we can do by working alone. We already have great partnerships with a number of other organisations and we are keen to continue them.
• ‘Working with communities’ is a core value of Leeds City Council and can contribute towards achieving the Council’s priority of creating ‘Safer, Stronger Communities’ by bringing people together to make positive changes to their local environment.
• Providing volunteer opportunities has a range of benefits for the volunteers, as well as the green spaces they are volunteering at, including work experience, exercise, learning new things, improved mental health and meeting new people.
• Many parks and countryside volunteers are older people and we are keen to continue to benefit from their wealth of knowledge and experience whilst fulfilling some of the Age-Friendly priorities of the council, including ‘promoting opportunities for older people to be healthy, active, included and respected’ and ‘helping older people participate in the city through fulfilling employment and learning opportunities’.

We aim to provide friendly and helpful customer service whenever we interact with the public on our sites, in our shops and cafés, and when people make enquiries online, over the phone and in person. In particular we understand that our Bereavement Services team are often working with people at a very difficult time in their lives so we are committing to use the Charter for the Bereaved as a best-practice guide for our work in this area, with the ambitious goal of achieving gold in the Charter’s annual assessment for both cremations and burial-related services (currently our cremations are gold and our burial services are bronze). The Charter has been developed by the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management to set standards of service for the industry and covers a wide range of the work our Bereavement team undertake including provision of good, clear information, responding to enquiries efficiently and providing a range of options for bereaved people to meet the varied needs of diverse communities.

We will review the way we currently undertake public consultations, and develop and implement a best-practice approach, to make certain we get a good understanding of what local people think about proposed changes and help ensure we provide a service that meets their needs.

We are lucky to benefit from working with a number of organisations outside the Parks and Countryside service including Friends and In Bloom groups, local businesses, third sector organisations, sports clubs, educational institutions, allotment associations, other council departments (such as Museums and Galleries and Active Leeds). We look forward to continuing to work with them and developing new partnerships to deliver great parks and green spaces over the next 10 years.

Hundreds of volunteers a year help us to care for parks and green spaces, including one-off corporate volunteers, regular practical volunteers (doing things like nature conservation, gardening work and maintaining footpaths), event organisers and fundraisers. We will continue to support volunteers, promote volunteering and make sure the volunteer experience of working with us is enjoyable so people will want to work with us and volunteer engagement increases over the life of the strategy.

Financial Sustainability

Ensuring that quality public green space is available for the long term.

This priority is about ensuring we have sufficient funds to be able to deliver our goal of providing the best parks and green spaces in the UK and sustain them for future generations to enjoy.

Public green space has been shown to benefit the local economy by attracting residents, businesses and visitors to an area (for example, Roundhay Park hosts approximately 9 million visits a year) and reducing the costs of poor health to the NHS. A Fields in Trust study in 2018 estimated parks to have an equivalent economic value of £30.24 per person, per year based on several objective government measures of non-market goods including willingness to pay, life satisfaction and health.

There is a great deal of evidence for the value of public green space, but, of course, there is inevitably a cost to maintaining it. Leeds City Council is committed to providing core funding for the care of parks and green spaces but, as readers will be aware, we have been facing challenging financial times in recent years.

As highlighted in the National Heritage Lottery Fund report ‘State of UK Public Parks 2016,’ there has been a significant national decline in core funding for parks, and in March 2021 APSE (Association for Public Sector Excellence) reported that 71% of local authorities agree with the statement ‘reductions in funding have resulted in a withdrawal of maintenance from some land and an increase in unmaintained land.’ This decline in core funding is reflected in Leeds where, as a result of central government budget cuts, our core funding has reduced by over 50% in the last 10 years. Clearly, it is a challenge to continue to manage green spaces to a high standard given such financial setbacks, but by carefully planning, prioritising and adopting an enterprising approach, we intend to do so!

The Parks and Countryside service has long been committed to the ‘Civic Enterprise’ approach to managing public services. ‘Civic enterprise’ refers to the idea of individuals and private organisations becoming more Civic-minded (giving something back to their local communities, for example, through volunteering or corporate social responsibility as outlined in the last priority), and local authorities becoming more enterprising. As a service, we have been very successful over the last 10 years in generating an income to invest in public green space through enterprises that are popular with park users such as cafes, gift shops, events like the Christmas Experience at Lotherton and visitor attractions like Tropical World. It is this approach that we propose to continue with and refine through this priority.

Like the rest of Leeds City Council, we will continue to judiciously manage our finances; reviewing costs, fees and charges regularly and using enterprise and innovation to ensure we get best value when we procure or provide goods and services. 

We will seek opportunities to secure external funding to help us deliver the priorities in this strategy, for example through grants (such as those from the Heritage Lottery or Sport England) and developers’ contributions.

We will continue to apply an enterprising approach to the elements of our service that have commercial potential whilst being mindful of the other priorities in this strategy. This will include generating an income from our visitor attractions, cafés, shops, sponsorship, commercial events and concessions.

Health and Wellbeing

Providing and promoting a wide range of opportunities for people to get the health benefits of spending time in green spaces.

Evidence shows that being in green spaces has significant benefits for people’s mental and physical health. We aim to provide good quality parks and green spaces that incorporate a wide range of opportunities for people to be active, so that everyone can enjoy the health and wellbeing benefits of spending time in the great outdoors.

The main reasons we have chosen health and wellbeing as a priority are:

• Health and wellbeing is a priority in the Best Council Plan and evidence shows that parks and green spaces can make a significant contribution to ‘supporting healthy, physically active lifestyles’ and ‘reducing health inequalities’.
• Research shows that regularly spending time in green spaces dramatically reduces incidence and severity of conditions that are a real concern in modern life, such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes, anxiety and depression in people of all ages and backgrounds (but which tend to be more common in deprived neighbourhoods).
• We can contribute to the Get Set Leeds ‘Active Environment’ goal which was identified following a public consultation involving over 4,000 local people; In Leeds I am surrounded by things that make it easy and obvious for me to be active.
• We are responsible for managing a large number of popular outdoor sports facilities (including over 300 sports pitches, 29 outdoor gyms, 62 bowling greens, 90 tennis courts and 2 golf courses) and we need to ensure they are fit for purpose and cater for everyone.

The University of Leeds research showed that people prefer to use good quality parks, so fulfilling that priority is key to our contribution to public health, as it is one of the best ways to ensure people come to our green spaces. When it comes to investing in getting our parks and green spaces to a quality standard, we will prioritise those in areas of deprivation (especially where the housing is high density and many people don’t have their own private gardens) as a way to have the biggest positive impact on public health where resources are limited.

We are committed to providing a wide range of opportunities for people to be physically active in our green spaces so everyone can enjoy being active outdoors, no matter what their abilities or interests. In order to deliver this, we will adopt a strategic approach to investing in sports facilities so they are as varied and accessible as possible whilst providing good value in terms of cost to the council per user. We will work with local and national partners such as football and rugby clubs, Leeds Parks Bowls Partnership, the Lawn Tennis Association, Parkrun and England Cricket Board to promote, care for and improve the facilities.

In particular, we recognise the value of walking as a free, accessible, simple and effective form of exercise so we will create and promote at least one signposted ‘healthy walking’ route in every suitable community and city park.

We understand that in many cases green spaces, particularly the public rights of way network, provide ideal settings for active travel like walking and cycling (which benefits both health and the environment), and we will work with partners to promote cycling and walking opportunities at, and through, our sites where it is suitable. An example of this is at Temple Newsam that has several great cycling routes going to, and round it…and there are more to come! 

The Rights of Way Improvement Plan for Leeds, which sets out a ten-year plan for developing and improving the public rights of way network for walkers, horse riders, cyclists and those with visual or mobility impairments, will be reviewed and updated.

We are also committed to continuing to develop and promote the ‘country parks’ initiative across the city. The idea, which is well developed in West Leeds but needs expanding elsewhere, is to identify, improve and promote walking routes connecting up green spaces and local communities, so people can access and enjoy them easily on foot (or by bike where suitable).

Lastly, with partners, we’ll promote the benefits of spending time in green spaces to raise awareness of how good it can be for mental and physical health, and we’ll encourage people to use them for this purpose. We’ll also improve the information that is available about our sports facilities (from tennis courts to walking routes) so that people can easily find out what’s where.

Key Performance Indicators

From the priorities set out above, we have identified 2 key performance indicators (KPIs) for the Parks and Countryside service – these are the elements of our work that we think it is most important for us to deliver over the next 10 years. They are:

1. Number of city and community parks at, or above, Leeds Quality Park standard

There are 70 parks in Leeds including East End Park, Armley Park, Horsforth Hall Park and Middleton Park to name but a few. They incorporate a range of facilities (such as benches, playgrounds, sports pitches, walking routes, cafés and gardens) and are based across the city in local communities. Parks are the most popular green spaces in Leeds - the University of Leeds Parks Study found that parks host around 45 million adult visits a year. Because they are local and so relatively easy to access, and also because of the variety of facilities in them which serve a diverse range of people, we have decided that getting them to, and keeping them at, a good quality standard is fundamental for our service. By doing this we are committing to providing welcoming, safe, accessible, well maintained, clean, environmentally friendly parks – the kind of parks that people have told us they want to use, and this is why we have chosen it as a KPI. 

More information on the 26 criteria with which the LQP standard is assessed is provided in at the end of this document.

2. Hectares of trees planted

To help combat the climate emergency, we are planning to plant 50 hectares of trees every year to 2045 (1,250 hectares in total) to absorb carbon and protect the city against some of the other impacts of climate change such as extreme weather. Because it is so important both globally and locally to tackle the climate emergency, we have identified our goal of planting 50 hectares of trees in Leeds every year for the next 10 years as our contribution to the council’s goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2030 and the second key performance indicator in this strategy.

Leeds Quality Park Criteria

When judging a park, it must be given a score of 0 – 10 on the 26 criteria listed below.

Implementing the strategy

The Parks and Countryside Service will focus on the actions set out above over the next 10 years. We will also consider the priorities outlined whenever changes are proposed. For example, when we receive funding to invest in a park, we will consider how it could be used to increase quality, accessibility and biodiversity; we will look for opportunities to make that park more child-friendly and culturally interesting (e.g. by restoring an historic feature) and how it might be used to promote health and wellbeing. We will look at how the investment might be used to help reduce the impact of climate change (by including tree planting, for instance) and we will also make sure any changes to the site are financially sustainable.

Checklist for Parks and Countryside staff

Before any changes are made to the way the Parks and Countryside Service operates during the life of this strategy, consideration should be given to how they will impact on the delivery of the aims set out in the strategy, with the intention being to help deliver those aims. The table below can be used to help with that process.

Progress on delivering the strategy will be reviewed annually, and there will be a more detailed review, to check the priorities and actions are still relevant, in 5 years’ time.

Conclusion

We would like to thank everyone involved in the consultation for taking the time to share your thoughts with us – we hope we have captured the main priorities of the people of Leeds in the strategy and that the people who live, work and visit the city continue to enjoy its parks and green spaces for the next 10 years and beyond. We look forward to fulfilling our ambition to provide the best parks and green spaces in the country and making a significant contribution to Leeds being the Best City in the UK!