Local Government and Communities Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Official Report 648KB pdf

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Green Spaces

The committee will now hold its second round-table evidence session of the day. We have a number of interested stakeholders to discuss the impact on communities of accessing green spaces and related issues—welcome, everyone. Perhaps we could go round the table and introduce ourselves, MSPs included. I will start. I am the convener of the committee.

I am the chief executive of Greenspace Scotland.

I am the deputy convener of the committee.

I am the head of place and equity for NHS Health Scotland.

I am an MSP.

I am the manager of Fields in Trust Scotland.

I am an MSP.

I am an MSP.

I am acting head of policy at the Scottish Wildlife Trust, but I am speaking on behalf of Scottish Environment LINK.

I am an MSP.

I am green space officer at Fife Council.

I am an MSP.

I am chair of the Edinburgh Green Spaces Forum, representing the volunteer groups in the city of Edinburgh.

Thank you all for coming along. As in the previous session, we will maximise the amount of time for witnesses to speak—for MSPs, not so much, although we hope to stimulate debate in certain directions along the way.

This session was probably sparked by “The Third State of Scotland’s Greenspaces Report” from Greenspace Scotland. I will throw this question out for general comment to get us started. What came out of that report for me was that the issue does not seem to be so much the amount of green space, such as the number of parks, as the quality of that space, which appears to have gone down. What are the witnesses’ experiences and thoughts on that?

It would be only fair to let Greenspace Scotland start.

Thank you. It is important to do that biennial or triennial check on what our green space looks like because we know that green space is important for our quality of life and our quality of space, with regard to health, play and physical activity. We have worked with Ordnance Survey and now have a comprehensive record of every area of green space in urban Scotland, and most of the publicly accessible green space in the rest of Scotland has now been mapped, so we know absolutely how much green space we have. For those who are interested in numbers, it is 1,593 square kilometres. Let me put that into perspective: it is 22 times the area of Loch Lomond or one third of the Cairngorms national park. In urban Scotland, we are more green than grey, as more than 50 per cent of our urban area is green. We have very good-quality access to green space. Most of us live within a five-minute walk of green space.

However, the challenge that we found when we did the report was the decline in quality. From 2009 to 2017, we have seen a fall in the quality of our green space. Forty per cent of people say that their green space has deteriorated in the past five years, which is having an impact on use. In 2017, we saw the lowest weekly frequency of green space use that we have seen at any time in the past. That is important if we think about the need to tackle issues of child obesity, health and wellbeing. Having access to green space that feels safe, accessible and welcoming is important. That is the challenge. We have seen cutbacks in local authority and other forms of management, and we are now seeing the quality of the space deteriorate, which means that we are at risk of losing those benefits.

We know that the quality of green space is particularly important for health outcomes. My organisation, NHS Health Scotland, is particularly interested in health inequality and reducing the gap between those who are the best off in our society and those who are the worst off. From a quality perspective, we know that people in the most deprived areas have the least amount of access to green space; in particular, the quality of those green spaces is much lower than in other communities. The quality of green space, particularly from a health and health inequality perspective, is pretty significant.

After a tour around Scottish Environment LINK, the strongest feeling that I had back was that quality was of high importance. There is a distinction between functionless green desert and high-quality, biodiverse space that provides a range of benefits—not just health benefits, but the sometimes overlooked benefits such as flood amelioration and mental health benefits. The biodiversity side of things is also very important to our membership.

Fields in Trust Scotland recently commissioned a major study into revaluing parks and green spaces, which is referred to in our submission. It looks at putting an economic value and a wellbeing value on green spaces and the estimated savings to the NHS for those who use green spaces regularly. I commend that report to you. I invite everyone to look at parks and green spaces in a completely different way.

For communities, quality is the most important thing. It is all very well having a green space very close to your front door, but if you do not want to go there, it is of no value whatsoever. It could be 10 minutes away, half an hour away or a car journey away, but people have to want to visit a green space and get some benefit from it. People use the green spaces that we have. There are many green spaces for many different reasons, and they are of tremendous benefit to health, both physical and mental, but people have to want to visit them, so we have to try to improve the quality if we can.

We measured the amount of green space provision in Fife. Most places had a good amount of space, including even places such as Glenrothes, which had a very large amount of space as a planned new town. People were within two and a half minutes’ walk of a green space. The big issue is the quality. In Fife, there has been a 25 per cent reduction in the amount of money going to maintain green spaces. That is having an add-on effect on maintenance staff and backroom staff—the staff who do the improvements. We have reduced the nice things, such as the flowers and shrub beds, maintenance of intensively managed grass and litter picking. There is evidence that we are reducing the quality.

It is important to understand that, when we talk about the quality of the green space, it is about making sure not only that the grass is a certain height or that we have a certain number of shrubs but that the green space is right for communities. It is important to understand that, when we talk about quality, it is not just about grass length and so on.

Kevin O’Kane mentioned Glenrothes. I live in East Kilbride, which is also a new town, and of course the new towns were designed with specific green spaces. In East Kilbride, I see that some of those original green spaces are getting run down. Council money is not being spent on them, and one or two of them are at risk—one in particular, which the council may want to build on. If the money that goes into green spaces is being cut, there is a risk that they could be sold off or developed for something else, which would have an impact on people’s health and wellbeing. That is a concern. The submission from Greenspace Scotland suggests that councils should have a green space strategy—I am quite surprised that they do not all have one—and that there should be a Scottish green space innovation and transformation fund.

At one point, local authorities were required to produce open-space strategies, so many local authorities have them, but they are coming up for renewal. At the moment, the wording is that they “should” have them, so there is something to be done there, with the committee’s scrutiny of the Planning (Scotland) Bill, to ensure that local authorities have an open-space strategy. It is not just about parks; it is about a green network strategy that takes a green infrastructure perspective. We are evaluating across spaces, looking at how each is managed for the functions that it needs to deliver.

With regard to resources, one of the challenges is that you will probably not find parks and green spaces on local authority balance sheets and in their asset registers; if you do find them, you might see a token value of £1. That is because they are measured in terms of what it costs to maintain them rather than the many benefits that they deliver. Fields in Trust did work in Edinburgh on a social return on investment study that showed that every pound invested gave a return of £12 to £16. We need to start looking at how we value our parks and green spaces as natural capital assets rather than liabilities.

Across Scotland, local authorities are facing challenging times, not just with green space but across every budget area. We have seen people rise to the challenge of doing more with less, but we have reached a point where they cannot do much more of that. It is very important to find new ways of working in partnership with communities and other organisations on how we manage parks to deliver benefits for people and for wildlife. An example is the partnership in Edinburgh with the Scottish Wildlife Trust on living landscapes. That is what we would like to see with a transformation fund. For example, in Aberdeenshire, we looked at how we manage parks to mitigate and adapt to climate change. It takes a bit of additional resource and capacity to start looking at things from a new perspective and to free up opportunities to think a little bit differently about how we manage our parks and green space.

Colin Rennie’s organisation was mentioned there.

I said earlier that we had commissioned a study. The findings are being launched in the Welsh Assembly today. We have a Scottish launch planned, but the document is available now. It takes a completely different view and says that parks and green space should not viewed as a nice to have or a good to have but as a must have if we are to tackle some of our health and other problems in Scotland. We know from the research that we conducted that people who regularly use parks and green spaces live healthier lives. We can put a price on that, which allows us to view parks and green spaces in that completely different way.

Are there any other comments on the points made by Mr Simpson?

It is not only councils that own public green space, as many landowners own such space too. In Fife, there was a housing development on an old cricket pitch and the council included a bit of green space as part of the planning conditions. It was managed by a factor, but the factor has now sold it on to a private individual who has stopped maintaining it, so it has now become a blight for the community. I do not know whether the private landowner wants to sell it on for housing. We also have large estates in Fife that own public land, and there are issues with that as well.

It is not just a council thing. Green space is a finite resource. There was quite a lot of green space in the new towns, but once it is lost, it is lost. Protecting it is a big issue.

As one of the landowners that have a lot of land around communities, the Scottish Wildlife Trust views its reserves in different ways. Perhaps those on remote Scottish islands, for example, are exclusively for biodiversity, but some are there for public engagement.

A lot of pressure has been placed on our resource by the spread of development. It is the same across other non-governmental organisations, and it must be the same for councils, too. Quite often developers view green space that they do not own and manage as an asset, because people want to move to areas where they can play with their kids, walk their dog and so on. Having to maintain infrastructure and ensure that boundaries are not eroded by the creep of back gardens and so on puts a lot of strain on us. There are huge reasons to encourage good access, but there is also the idea of responsible access. There could be some thinking around what developers that benefit from a housing development can do to help maintain an asset.

11:30  

The NHS, of course, is a significant landowner. On the back of what Julie Procter was saying, I think that there has to be a shift in attitudes towards our land, particularly green spaces, so that we see them as assets—as something that can be of value—rather than deficits that cost money. That goes for the NHS as well as local authorities and other landowners.

There will be lots of opportunities for the witnesses to come back in. We will move on to our next question.

I will follow on from Graham Simpson, as the constituency MSP for Glenrothes. Kevin O’Kane, who is from Fife Council, will not be surprised to hear this.

I was interested in Dr Matt Lowther’s point about the link between deprivation and access to green space, particularly because Glenrothes faces huge problems with child poverty. It is a good news story about access to green space, however, because when the town was first built, there was a great utopian vision that Glenrothes would be a garden town and good air quality was used as a selling point to get people to come to the town and settle, which they did in great numbers. However, we know from the Fife Council audit that 45 of the 95 green spaces need to be improved, and 45 are considered to be improving. Can you tell us a bit about the other 50? Are they okay in the Fife Council audit?

Dr Matt Lowther’s second point was about making sure that land is right for the community, I know that the Fife Council audit looked at quality. How was the quality of the green space that you looked at assessed?

We did a detailed survey 10 years ago and I am trying to get funds to do one again. We looked at the amount of land and access to land. Glenrothes was very interesting because it was well-planned and had a lot of space. People have a two and a half minute walk to a green space in Glenrothes, as they do in East Kilbride and some of the other new towns. There is a high degree of access. There were big budgets when the new towns were first put in and there were very good budgets to maintain them. That has changed now, but even 10 years ago, Glenrothes still had a high budget to keep it well looked after.

We did a survey of about 460 green spaces in Fife and found that about half of them need to be improved. Greenspace Scotland did some good work about 10 years ago on defining what quality is. It is about how attractive the green space is, how you can get into it, the wildlife, the community, and health and wellbeing. We looked at six or seven different factors.

Some of the Fife green spaces need a lot of money and time to improve them. For others that are not owned by the council, it will take longer. There is a case in one of the towns where a private individual owns the green space and trying to get that changed is difficult.

We have found clear links to deprivation in Levenmouth. There are whole communities where the quality of the green space is poor. In Buckhaven, a community group, CLEAR Buckhaven, is working with the council. In post-industrial areas, the quality of the green spaces was a lot poorer because they did not have town parks and, with budget cuts, it is a challenge to improve them.

Councils’ capital budgets have been slashed, so it is challenging to find money to repair and improve things. We rely greatly on applying for grants and some of the grant processes can be quite hard, taking a month in some cases. One application that I did required 50 documents to be submitted with the application form. Another issue with funding is that they now fund up-front capital costs but do not put any money into establishment costs. Twenty years ago, the Scottish Development Department had establishment funds, so when someone was setting up a green space project, there was a 10-year fund to get it established. There are quite a lot of challenges.

I have a comment on access to green space and deprivation. If you look at it on a quantity basis, you will often find that more deprived communities do have very large areas of green space but they are often functionless, boring, green deserts around high-rise buildings standing in the middle of grass. They are not very welcoming spaces—not somewhere you would want to take your kids out to play—and they do not do much for biodiversity either.

In our surveys, we ask people about their expectations for green spaces as being good places for children to play, for relaxation, and physical activity. In deprived areas, people often have higher expectations that green space should provide those things, but when we ask about the local reality of their green space, the ratings are much lower. There is a huge gap between expectations and reality in more deprived communities and we could do a lot more.

One of the worrying things we learned from our survey was about satisfaction levels. For the very first time, we have closed the opportunity gap and brought together the figures for all of Scotland and the 15 per cent most deprived communities for some satisfaction ratings, but that is not because we have improved quality in the more deprived areas; it is because quality has deteriorated across the piece.

On the point about deprivation, health and the role of green space, there is pretty good evidence now that if we can get this right and improve the quality of green spaces, particularly in deprived areas, it can help to reduce health inequality. There is a bigger impact on the more deprived areas. If we can get this right, it can make a significant contribution to improving health inequalities.

Mr O’Kane talked about the reduction in budgets and how the council has to spend a lot of the resource it has on cutting grass, de-littering, and so on. I did not see much in the submission about the impact of things like dog fouling and littering.

When I was a councillor in Glasgow, the city council had what at that time was quite a radical idea of allowing a lot of areas to become rewilded, effectively, to attract animals, birds, insects, and wildflowers. All that happened, frankly, was that people began to object to it because the areas became an unsightly magnet for litter. That affects all parts of Scotland pretty badly, to one degree or another. So much litter everywhere shames the country. What impact is that having on our green spaces? You were talking about people’s attitudes, low dissatisfaction levels a few years ago and people being less willing to use the spaces. Did the dog fouling and litter issues have that kind of impact?

Through our work with Edinburgh living landscape, Cumbernauld living landscape and various urban initiatives we have realised that, in the past, we were not so good at explaining the rationale behind that sort of thing, so people did not get it and thought it was neglect. We now spend a lot of time on interpretation, taking community groups out, and also working with “friends of” groups, particularly in Cumbernauld. We work with 12 different friends of parks groups to explain the rationale behind how such a decision saves money and helps with things like flooding and biodiversity. We have made some quite big strides in that area.

On your point about other pressures on urban areas, dog fouling is certainly one, but we are increasingly getting industrial dumping, asbestos, horses, you name it, on reserves.

On rewilding, you cannot just leave things alone. You need to maintain the public green space. Some councils have tried to just stop cutting the grass, but you still need to do the litter and, if you do want to make it better for wildlife, you have to cut the grass two or three times. Such areas still need money for maintenance. You cannot just abandon them. If you do abandon them, they become a blight.

I commend work like the living landscapes projects because, in a lot of places where they tried to change the grass-cutting regime without any communication, it was interpreted as just money saving, but it is not. There needs to be a planned approach.

A lot of the experience from Edinburgh has been shared in other places. In Dunfermline public park, young people from Greenspace Scotland’s young placechangers programme have been working with the community council. That has changed the management regime. There are wilder areas but paths are always cut through the grass and the edges are always managed so that it looks as though it is a managed space. It is delivering benefits for people and biodiversity. That is important.

There are now a lot of opportunities to share practice across different local authorities. Greenspace Scotland has a park manager’s forum that brings all 32 local authorities together. Each council is facing similar challenges and they can learn a lot from each other.

We have touched on funding and expenditure and there is vast variation across Scotland, depending on local councils’ priorities. Partnership working has come about in recent years and I would like to expand on that. You have bloom committees or communities that take on ownership, or even trusts that look after parks or spaces. The way forward seems to be to try to fill the gap while ensuring that there is still some ownership of the organisation within the community, but the funding comes out of a different stream. How has that improved the situation?

Some of our parks and green spaces have been taken over by trusts or community groups. I suppose that it does help but it does not address everything because the scale of the cuts has changed everything. We have sometimes had to take parks back from community groups.

We have 60 bloom groups in Fife and they are very important. There is a lot of community capacity building and improvements in towns and villages. It is one aspect, and certainly in Fife we are very active in it, but because of the amount of the green space that we have, it is just one element in the equation.

John Kerr will probably want to comment on the role of friends groups. The survey that we did in 2017 showed a significant increase in people wanting to have more of a say about what happens in their green space and to get actively involved in physical activities and tasks to improve the site. We did not find any significant appetite for ownership of title of the land.

The Heritage Lottery Fund found something similar when it did its “State of UK Public Parks 2016” report. Fewer than 10 per cent of the friends groups that were actively involved in managing sites wanted to take on a lease or a more formal arrangement. There were concerns about liabilities, insurance, and so on. Although there is a strong focus on community empowerment, we have not seen the same scale of interest in community buyouts and transfers in urban Scotland as we have seen in more rural and highland areas.

One of the biggest challenges we have seen is with green space groups that have looked at ownership. They have not been able to find any way of developing a sustainable income stream from parks and green spaces, so they do not have any way of resourcing costs on an on-going basis. We are actively looking at that and I hope that a transformation and innovation fund could assist with it.

We are looking now at opportunities to generate heat and energy from our parks and green spaces. Are there ways in which they can generate income that could come back into a community fund? The energy generated locally could be used locally, and the fund could come back into the community groups to resource improvements in the site, in a virtuous circle? I think John Kerr has a lot of practical experience from the friends groups.

11:45  

You have lots of interest in that, including from me. I particularly want to ask a specific question about friends groups, but I will restrain myself.

Friends groups are invaluable for communications. NGOs can seem faceless to local communities. The friends groups are invaluable for us to get local staff on the ground and get messages out to the community. The grass cutting is a great example, but there are numerous other things.

Yes. As the representative of “friends of” groups, I have never felt as loved as I do at present. A lot of the people in such groups started off thinking that they could something about tidying up their park and making it a better place to visit and so on. They have since become experts in public liability, insurance risk assessments, health and safety, and they are currently wrestling with the general data protection regulation, becoming a registered charity to encourage funding, and how to apply for funding. They are doing so many things in addition to the basic things that they thought they might be doing as a friend of their park. The thought of also taking on ownership is just a step too far for a lot of groups. It is a big responsibility to take on. Many of the representatives in friends groups are not exactly the youngest people on the planet. Many of them are young, and apologies to them, but many of them are older and they are not prepared to consider taking on that extra work at this time.

I might come back to you on that.

Following on from John Kerr’s point, our charity takes the view that local authorities will always have the most important central role in providing and maintaining green spaces. We take the view that not all transfers are good.

Let me give you one example of what often happens when a football team successfully takes over a pitch. The problem is that if the ground on which the pitch sits is not a lot bigger than the pitch, they want to fence the pitch off, which excludes everyone else. Unfortunately, football teams sometimes only see the pitch as a pitch, but it is often a place where kids learn to kick a ball, hit a ball with a bat, and ride a bike, and it works enormously well when pitches are not fenced off. When there is a game on, no one walks a dog across the pitch but the minute the game is finished, the park is open to all. There are, as we see it, sometimes difficulties with transfers when they take a large space in quite a small area.

I will indulge myself slightly here and come in on “friends of” groups. In my constituency, they are invaluable. Thank goodness they exist. I would look at “friends of” groups and see their role going way beyond the austerity of the last few years. Friends of Maryhill park do not have ownership but they have direct use of much of the park. The tennis courts in the park closed, the bowling green closed, and the athletics park fell into abeyance a long time ago, before austerity. There appears to have been a long-term managed decline of some of these assets and friends of Maryhill park has stepped in during difficult financial times and is doing amazing work that goes beyond the park, including setting up community arts initiatives.

With the friends of Springburn park, the new community village will open up within the park on 2 and 3 June. It is a wonderful initiative being taken in partnership with the local authority. I am not trying to criticise local authorities, but there has been a long-term managed decline of many parks. I am sad to say that about Glasgow, especially given that Springburn park is a jewel in Glasgow’s crown. The parks outwith the more affluent areas have been run down and the “friends of” groups in my constituency have an invaluable role.

We were talking about how we support parks and open spaces. I am wondering whether there is any innovation fund, for example, to support communities or “friends of” organisations. Is it just to stop the decline elsewhere outwith an urban setting, where equalities gaps have only closed because the nicer assets are now starting to deteriorate? If there was money to spend supporting communities’ access to open spaces here, my money would go on supporting the “friends of” groups because those are volunteer-led groups in my constituency that do a wonderful job. We cannot spend money everywhere, so if you had the priority, what would you support? Mr Kerr, it is fair to come to you first.

I would support trying to encourage new groups. There are a lot of well-established groups throughout Scotland. There are fewer “friends of” groups in the less wealthy areas, and it is about how we get more groups to start up and encourage that community interest.

The missing voice, and unfortunately the missing member of our groups here today, is that of young people. We have been working in Dunfermline with a group of young placechangers who wanted to be here today but unfortunately exams took priority over attending a committee meeting. That is another strand. When you look at “friends of” groups, they are generally of an older generation, and young people are often invisible in place consultations. If they are mentioned at all, they are often seen as a problem, hanging around, causing vandalism, and so on.

We have been working with Youth Scotland and the young placechangers programme and now, with funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, we are rolling that out. This is about putting young people in the lead. They are leading consultations in their communities, parks and streets, and bringing forward place visions and action plans. As we have seen in Dunfermline, that is invigorating some of the “friends of” groups, and bringing in fresh ideas and new approaches. We hope, with an innovation fund, to look at how we involve people who are not the usual suspects and not the people who are using them now, in using and managing our parks.

Do other witnesses want to comment on that? I should point out that the members of my “friends of” groups are not old. I say that because I am going to show them the footage of this evidence session.

“Friends of” groups also need support, and it takes council officers to help. A lot of such groups fill out the application forms, or even get constituted, so if there was a fund, there is a need for that support.

A lot of the groups burn out because they are volunteers and there are only so many volunteers. A lot of these people are on other committees—maybe five committees. Part of any innovation money could support them and help them with the everyday things.

It was around the time that resource reduction started to bite at City of Edinburgh Council that the Edinburgh green spaces forum was set up for groups to help each other. My group was relatively new at the time and we had basically invented a lot of things ourselves, or reinvented them, and we thought that was stupid. We got all the friends of parks groups beginning to talk to one another and help one another with things like constitutions. We could share knowledge and make it easier for a new group that is starting up.

On the point about children and young people, it is important to point out that the evidence is fairly strong that kids who use green space as kids grow up to be adults who use green space, so getting the involvement of kids at a young age is essential. There is a life-course approach.

Still on “friends of” groups, I am thinking out loud. Earlier I mentioned the park in East Kilbride where there were two football pitches. They have not been used for football for years. The park is definitely under threat and the council wants to build on it. I wondered whether we could do an asset transfer, but from listening to the witnesses and reading their submissions, it appears that that might be a bit too much for people to take on. What if we formed a “friends of” group? That sounds good but—I do not know the answer to this, perhaps you could help me, John Kerr—are friends-of groups able to apply for funds themselves so that they can fund improvements to this park?

Yes, they can. That is one of the reasons why they become registered charities because it is easier for them to get the funds. They can do it and in certain instances it is a good way to go. It depends on the area and the enthusiasm of the group.

Okay. That is useful.

I note from the report by Greenspace Scotland that came out a couple of months ago that, of the green space in Scotland, only 4 per cent is public parks and gardens, 28 per cent is private gardens—so we can put them to one side, because they are not accessible—and 37 per cent is amenity green space, which is presumably the land outside offices and things like that. The focus of attention has been on the 4 per cent that is made up of public parks. I am interested in people’s view on what we could do about the 37 per cent that is amenity green space.

At the weekend I was out at Airdrie, visiting some community groups at Woodhall and Faskine, which is a big bit of green belt in which there is an old canal. There were lots of children playing there. That is where they go. They do not go to any of the bits of formal green space land; they go to the land that is 10 minutes’ walk from where they live but is in the countryside. The challenges regarding the management of that are pretty profound, but it appears that those are the kinds of places where young people find a lot of fun and enjoyment, because they are full of woods and burns and they can go fishing and all the rest of it. Is there a danger that, in focusing on green space, we neglect the green belt? What can we do about amenity green space?

That brings us into the thorny issue of the definition of “green space”. I can honestly say that our discussion item on it was one of the longest that the Greenspace Scotland board has ever had. Our definition of green space is all vegetated land and water in the urban environment. From our perspective, when we talk about green space we are talking not just about parks but about the amenity spaces, the allotments, the community gardens and the woodlands. It is that plethora of different kinds of green space that gives the variety that meets people’s needs. Some days it might a formal playing field to play a game of football or a park for a picnic with friends, and at other times will be a walk in the woodland or a walk down a canal towpath.

Amenity space is important. You are right: the definition of amenity space is the incidental spaces around buildings. It could be quite large swathes of grass, areas around offices and roadside verges, and it all has a potential role. Some of it has play equipment, paths or seats, and functions more as a park.

I think we need to be looking at that whole different type of green space. That is where some of the challenges come in about one size fits all, in terms of quality, because the type of management that you need in a wild woodland area is slightly different from what you would want in a formal park. We need to look at all those things. When we start to look at green networks from an ecological perspective, diversity comes in. At that point even private gardens are important, and their green fabric is also important if we are looking at how we are managing flooding and air quality.

We quite often talk about the concept of nature deficit disorder in children—children not growing up in natural spaces. There is sometimes a problem when the green spaces that are available are not necessarily the wildest places that children can visit, so I am pleased to hear Andy Wightman say that children were playing in the place near Faskine.

I will tell you another reason why that makes me happy. I am conscious of the concept that we have in Scotland that wild spaces are places that you drive to—maybe at the weekends you might go up to the Campsies or something like that—rather than something that you have on your doorstep. We are keen to try to break that. Our definition of green space certainly includes that kind of wilder aspect.

Just to be clear, the place where the children were playing that I was talking about was not green space as defined by the agenda that we have here. It was green belt on the edge of the settlement. It was far more valuable to those children than anything in their community.

I would completely agree with that. The value increases immensely when green space includes those kinds of wilder aspects, and sometimes that means that it is not managed as intensively.

12:00  

The definition of green space has been a big problem. Certainly with new housing developments, developers can put in some land that is not accessible to people. We came up with a definition of publicly usable green space, which is land for communities. We defined other types of green space, such as the verges and business estates, as functional green space. We need to protect the publicly useable green space.

In relation to children’s play, Fife manages 450 play parks and a lot of them are not in a great position or of good quality. We are trying to say to communities that if we take out a couple of the play parks and improve one other play park, that would be better for the community, but the community is fixated. It thinks that play is to do with play parks, whereas natural spaces can be as valuable. However, you may find that natural spaces are not maintained as well as parks, and there can be litter.

In terms of the land use planning system, we have been looking at green spaces and natural spaces and how there are networks around the towns, and we have developed green networks. They are valuable for protection of the links between green spaces. Ecological fragmentation is an issue, but an interconnected network of green spaces is valuable and can have a massive impact on cycling and walking, and even on flooding.

The countryside around towns can be as valuable as urban green space. The closer green spaces are to people, the more they will be used. The World Health Organization says that you will use green space more regularly if it is within 10 minutes’ walk. Going back to quality, different age groups use green spaces in different ways.

The type of green space where kids play that Andy Wightman is talking about is easily created in an urban setting, in a big park. Increasingly, the nature of play areas for children reflects that. It is no longer recognised in the play sector that things such as swings, roundabouts and a chute fill the criteria; the play areas are much more reflective of the sort of thing that you find on the edge of towns. That is increasingly recognised and increasingly more attractive. Such spaces are more challenging for kids, and it seems that they are being rolled out, but as a consequence of the financial challenges that local authorities have they are being rolled out at a very slow pace.

I am sure that is something that we will want to come on to as part of our budget scrutiny, which we are trying to embed in all our evidence sessions.

I have nothing further to add. I am merely observing that if we are—and I think we should be—improving the planning environment, resourcing and the management of these spaces to get more out of them and improve their quality, it was striking that the area that I visited was not one of the designated green spaces. The nearest space they had was the countryside, which is on the edge of the village, and that countryside is under threat. That green belt land is offering a much higher quality environment in which folk can play, walk and recreate than anything that is embedded within the definition of the urban footprint. In a sense, if we are looking at quality green space—and the countryside is green space—there is maybe an argument for having a slightly more integrated approach than just drawing a hard line and saying that we have a particular approach to everything inside it and a slightly different approach to the countryside.

Does Julie Procter want to come in?

I am keen to introduce into the conversation the concept of outdoor nurseries and the potential opportunities that might be coming forward with the commitment to increase the number of childcare hours. We are doing some work with Inspiring Scotland, and we held a round table back in February to look at opportunities where nursery provision does not have to be in a built environment—Graham Simpson was talking about putting a building on a park. We have seen the Scandinavian model, and there are a number of nature kindergartens. Would it not be quite interesting if a large proportion of the extra hours of childcare provision could be delivered through outdoor nurseries? There is quite an amount of documented research on the health benefits of such childcare and its impact on children’s future behaviours. We could be making our parks and green spaces work much harder as outdoor nurseries.

I apologise to committee members and witnesses, but now that you have said that, I cannot not mention Maryhill mobile crèche, which is an absolutely wonderful outdoor nursery that is going through a period of expansion, partly because of the reasons and mindset that you talked about. The kids go there prepared to go outside unless it is unsafe, and they bring clothes accordingly. They love it and there is huge demand for it, so I am really glad that you raised that point. I apologise again for indulging myself.

I want to pick up on planning. The committee has spent a lot of time in recent weeks and months scrutinising the Planning (Scotland) Bill, and some of you have made submissions to us on that. I want to open up the discussion to witnesses. What could the planning system do differently—we have a show of hands already—to make sure that we have high-quality green space and more of it? Is there anything in the bill that you would like to see amended? I think that Bruce Wilson is keen to get started.

I am not unsurprised that Bruce Wilson wants to answer the question, and I will come to him first. I want to make people aware that our stage 1 debate on the bill in the Parliament is on the 29th of this month. I suspect if we all want to come in on this subject I will be extending the meeting to 5 pm this afternoon, but it is only right that you take your opportunity.

I will be really brief. Daphne Vlastari has already supplied various minutes and you actually told me about the next stage this morning, so that is fantastic.

We could simplify a lot by saying that a lot of statements made within planning to do with green space, green infrastructure and green networks are very often “shoulds” and not “musts”. It quite often gets left to the end of a process that a developer should—not must—pay due attention to connected green networks and that kind of thing. You have our suggested amendments to the bill, but specifically we are very worried about loss of supplementary planning guidance. That is probably the main thing I would say in regard to the bill.

I completely echo Bruce Wilson’s comments about the concern around loss of supplementary planning guidance. That is certainly what most local authorities and friends groups have been talking to us about. We would be looking for a duty to produce an open space strategy. We welcome the references to green infrastructure in the bill, but most of the policy that is happening at a local level is in the supplementary planning guidance. It is essential that that is not lost in the bill.

Does Colin Rennie have any comments specific to planning?

The current planning system has a statutory consultation process with sportscotland on playing fields. That in itself has quite a lot of limitations, because when a playing field is threatened with development, sportscotland looks at it only from the perspective of its sport use, whether it is a football, rugby or cricket pitch: “Do we need this site as a cricket pitch?” There is no consideration of how the site is used beyond that. We have that statutory process and I beg the question: might it be useful to have a statutory process to engage with interested organisations on other green spaces before a site is developed?

We generally take the view that it is far too easy for local authorities to develop spaces they own that are zoned for green space in breach of their own local development plan and in breach of Scottish planning policy, which has a presumption against it. I think that the spirit and intention is good, but the application is slightly different. As Bruce Wilson said, there are too many “shoulds” and not enough “musts”. There is a presumption against development, and if you develop you should replace. That rarely happens.

From my experience of the planning system and development planning in Fife, I would say that Fife is quite good at protecting green space. There is a rigorous approach. It needs to do more, but the quantity has not dramatically gone down in Fife. It is the quality that is a big issue.

A lot of the planning system is very much based on sites. Going back to the new towns, the good thing with them was that we planned the whole new town and the spaces in it, so we got a really good integrated network of spaces. Planning now is very much to do with the site within the red boundary, not what is outside the site, linking it to other green spaces. If we can take a better approach in which we are integrating and looking at network connections, it will help.

The quantity of green spaces is quite important for public health. Having large spaces that are connected is better for people’s health. The problem with a lot of social housing and private housing is that every space is important in terms of space to build a house. There are problems providing green space in a lot of new housing developments. The supplementary planning guidance is essential for laying out the quantity, then we need to have a development system for structuring the network. There is a lot of fragmentation, and more connections are better for walking and cycling.

For members of the public who maybe have not engaged with this issue to the level the that committee and the witnesses have, much of that is in the committee’s stage 1 report, which is available on the committee’s web page.

Are there any additional comments on planning before Monica Lennon asks a supplementary on that?

Let me introduce the concept of the national ecological network. We have alluded to the importance of connectivity, which is absolutely vital for biodiversity. An overarching strategy that gives the same level of strategic planning for our green and blue infrastructure as we already have for our other networks, such as motorways or digital, would be enormously helpful.

Monica, do you want to come back on any of that?

Yes. Julie Procter and Kevin O’Kane both mentioned supplementary guidance. If supplementary guidance does not survive in its current form, do you see a way to include it in local development plans, which would be on a 10-year cycle? If it disappears, where else would you do that kind of work?

We need to look at what can actually be included in the planning bill as the national framework, so that that feeds down and influences things locally. Kevin O’Kane is probably closer to the local authority side, with regard to what we would do without supplementary guidance.

I am not a planner, so I cannot say entirely, but certainly in our local development plan, “Making Fife’s Places”, we have supplementary guidance, and that has been really good for looking at not just sites but networks. If planning guidance is not set out nationally, I suppose that the onus is on the local authority to keep it. It has been very important for green space.

There is much more on that in our report. Graham—do you want to come in?

I have a couple of questions for Colin Rennie. First, does Fields in Trust Scotland have a legal agreement with Glasgow City Council?

Yes. We have one with most local authorities.

You have one with most local authorities.

Yes.

That is interesting, because the Fields in Trust submission says:

“Glasgow City Council protected 27 of its parks with Fields in Trust meaning the use is secured under legal agreement for recreation.”

Are you saying that you have an agreement with most local authorities?

We have agreements across Scotland with all local authorities except one. It is a nebulous concept. It is a legal agreement that protects the site in perpetuity. We do for parks, green spaces and playing fields what the listed building process does for architecturally important and historic buildings. We do not own them; there is a legal agreement that protects them and ensures that they cannot be developed on.

Occasionally, local authorities say to us that in order, for example, to widen a road, they need to use a bit of a site that we might have protected for decades. We have a process for dealing with that, which is strictly in line with Scottish planning policy except that, while Scottish planning policy says that any land that is used for such purposes should be replaced, we say that it must be replaced, so that there is never any less quality or less space than there was before. We roll out legal agreements all across Scotland. The main thing that we do is protect green spaces for the benefit of the user groups.

Is it easy to find out where these spaces are?

Yes, it is. Simply put in a postcode in the postcode site locator on our website and the dozen or so sites nearest that postcode will come up.

Okay. Is it easy to get new parks covered by one of those agreements?

We would like it to be easier, but we work in partnership with most local authorities in a very productive way. We have had different programmes at different times. For example, this is the centenary of the first world war and we have a programme with sites linked to that currently.

12:15  

The other question also relates to your evidence, but others might want to comment on it. You have mentioned that there is a parks action group down south and that you are calling for something similar here. Could you explain why that is?

The Westminster Parliament, which has responsibility for green spaces in England only, had an inquiry into the future of parks. Following on from that, it established a parks action group. Although a lot of good and important things have been said today, does this meeting give us sufficient time to look at the challenges that we have with parks and green spaces and to fully assess their importance in relation to links to health and wellbeing? I suspect not, so the committee might want to consider whether it would be a good thing to have more time allocated to this whole process and to make a decision arising from that on whether a parallel group ought to be set up for Scotland.

What do others think?

We encourage the committee to take a longer look at the issue of access to quality parks and green spaces and how we can make sure that the rhetoric is delivered on. Scotland probably has a better national policy framework for green space than anywhere else in the UK, but there is a gap between that and what happens. Something is lost in translation between the ambition of national policy and the aspirations of local communities and what people actually experience on the ground. We see this as a strong area for preventative spend. The money that is spent on green space delivers huge benefits in terms of our health and our children’s education, play and futures.

There is an opportunity to consider whether we are doing this right in Scotland and also an opportunity to get ahead of what is happening in England and Wales. For example, down there, Knowsley Council is proposing to sell off 19 of its parks in order to raise money to reinvest in a fund to maintain parks for the future. It had a longer, more in-depth inquiry through its communities and local government committee, and then it set up a parks action group. That also involves civil servants across a range of different departments as well as representatives of a range of organisations. They are considering particular topics relating to financial models, community involvement and communication. There is a good opportunity to take a deeper and broader look at what we need to do to make our green spaces assets for Scotland.

That is a very powerful sales pitch for further work by this committee. It is worth putting on the record that the purpose of these round-table discussions is to tease out whether and when or where we could do another more detailed piece of work. Sometimes it is a large piece of work; sometimes we will pick one aspect and focus on that. The committee will have to consider that.

We have about 10 minutes or so left. There are a few questions that we had prepared that we thought it would be good to ask in order to get some information on the record, so we might just do that for the last five to 10 minutes or so.

It was pointed out to me—although I should know it because I am speaking in the chamber tomorrow in relation to the national performance framework and the national outcomes—that a revised national outcome is access to green and blue space. It is very well intentioned and it might be mentioned by some members in the chamber tomorrow, but I suppose that the important thing, once you have the national outcome, is how you monitor that national outcome. Do you have any suggestions about how that should be monitored? You do not have to tell us just now; you can write to the committee with an answer.

At the moment, it is measured through the Scottish household survey, which asks people whether they live within a five-minute or a 10-minute walk of a green space. We can see that there is a difference between urban and rural areas. We ask a similar question in the green space survey only of urban residents, and we find that they have less access than rural residents.

At the moment, we are working with colleagues in the Scottish Government on a much more robust way of measuring access to green space. We have the Ordnance Survey green space map so we can use geographic information systems and digital analysis to do network analysis. We think that we are going to find that we probably have even better access to green space than is presently understood to be the case—that, is, that the digital analysis will show that more of us will be found to live within a five-minute walk than the physical measuring does.

In relation to that, we make the plea that the national indicator should be talking about access to quality green and blue space. That will tell us something useful. As we have heard from Matt Lowther, it is not just the quantity of and access to green space that has an impact on our health; it is also the quality of the spaces. We encourage this committee to say that quality needs to be in the national indicator as well, and we would be keen to look at how we measure that.

Sitting below that, there could be a series of criteria that would flesh that out. I think that the Government was trying to make the outcomes as short as possible, but there is a whole layer below that. For example the fact that there is access to quality green space does not mean that it is being used, so the issue is about access to and use of quality green space. You could have the best green space in the world, but if it is not used it just sits there. Do you have any other ideas on how some of that might be monitored? You can contact the committee at a later date in relation to that if you have any comments.

It would be remiss of us not to ask about the transformation and innovation fund, as Julie Procter mentioned it. That means money. We will be looking at budget scrutiny at some point. Some of the evidence that we have is that, despite the fact that all local authorities appear to have been impacted by very tight budgets at a local level, some local authorities spend a lot more than others in relation to access to green space and how that green space is managed. Before we go on to talk about the pounds and pence, do you have any suggestions about why some local authorities seem to do significantly better than others in that regard?

The park managers forum has had a really good look at the figures on spend that come from the Improvement Service. I have to say that some local authority colleagues did not recognise those figures, so I think that there might not be a standardised approach. There is a challenge when you are looking at the definition of green space and trying to see what people have included. Have they included cleansing and so on as well? There is quite a variety of figures, but that reflects the amount of green space that exists and the distribution of those spaces. It also reflects what is recorded on the green space account.

Okay, that is helpful. Bruce Wilson, do you want to add to that?

I do not have any figures, but I wonder if local authorities that have less provision of biodiversity expertise—again, that area has been cut quite heavily—possibly would not be as inclined to spend as much money on that area as others because they do not have people internally making those arguments.

So it could it be a workforce issue as well.

I would say so, yes.

That is interesting. Okay, so the pitch is there: let us have this transformation and innovation fund. Earlier on, we were talking about whether that should be used to build resilience with “friends of” groups, create new groups where there are gaps or fund community transfers—it could be for a variety of things. We will leave that debate sitting there, but we acknowledge that there is a joint obligation in relation to local government and the Scottish Government.

Just so we are clear in relation to what the call is for, would the fund be a stand-alone fund that would be created by the Scottish Government that individual groups or local authorities would bid for? Would it involve partnership funding between Scottish Government and local authorities agreed by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, with both sides putting in money? Would it be distributed at a local authority level? At some point, we will be doing budget scrutiny and, as the creation of such a fund is a significant ask, we would welcome any information that you want to give us in relation to that.

We would be very keen to come back with a fleshed-out proposal. On the thinking about the innovation fund, Nesta—the national agency for innovation—the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Big Lottery Fund have a rethinking parks programme, which is UK-wide and is looking at new models for parks. Scottish authorities and Scottish partnerships can apply to that programme. The programme has only £2 million available for work, so the amount of money that is going to come to Scotland from that is probably quite limited, but there is a lot of good practice that could come from that innovation fund.

Our thinking in this area draws on our experience of working with local authorities and with “friends of” groups on what we call pioneer projects, which involve finding a bit of space to come up with ways of doing things differently with the resources and capacity that you have. For instance, in Aberdeen, we looked at what the management would look like if we thought about how we are going to manage to mitigate and adapt to climate change. We have looked in other areas at how we could increase the amount of local food growing through managing our green space in different ways. We have to start pioneering some of those new approaches, particularly around energy, as that has the potential to bring income back into our green spaces.

That approach is critically important for community and “friends of” groups as well. When Greenspace Scotland was core-funded by Scottish Government, we used to run networking and training activities for community groups. We do not have the resource to do that now, so what you are seeing are small umbrella groups starting to come together in Edinburgh and Glasgow. However, there is not really a support group for “friends of” groups and community groups. Again, that would be something we could look at, and we will take up the invitation to come back to you with more detail.

On budget scrutiny, we have heard a lot about public health, and we have integrated health and social care services and integration joint boards across the country. That is dealt with in a budget line that this committee does not scrutinise, although we refer to it in relation to money that transfers from health into local authority directed spend for care. However, are we missing a trick in relation to how we look at some of that money?

Yes. The debate about preventative spend is pretty fundamental to this issue. My organisation and other people who work in public health will argue that, if we can move the money into prevention, that will have longer-term benefits, which will save the NHS money in the long term. Getting the evidence for that is quite difficult sometimes, and that is a challenge for us.

There are some things that the NHS can do. For example, we are part of a programme called the green exercise partnership. It is a partnership between the NHS, Scottish Natural Heritage and Forestry Commission Scotland that brings together funding from those organisations and the Scottish Government to green the NHS estate for a range of outcomes. There are definitely things that we can do, and there are things in process.

When the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee was scrutinising the budget, it noted that the environment delivers a wide range of benefits that create cost savings for other areas. Health was one that was mentioned. It was looking to make that budget connection, so that is something that we would be keen to encourage you to do.

There is some good practice in the health service. We are working at the moment with NHS Lothian to produce what will be the first green space in health strategic framework. That is again something that we should be looking to encourage. That approach is about not only how we use existing green spaces to improve people’s health but also the role of the health service estate. We talked about the fact that local authorities were not the only managers of land. We need to think about how we can use the NHS estate to deliver health benefits, given that it is a health-promoting national health service.

I have had a lot of indications from various witnesses that they want to speak, so I will go to the last budget-related question and then witnesses can choose to answer it or ignore it, but it is an opportunity for a final comment before we close the session.

Mr Gibson mentioned some basic issues, irrespective of how green space is defined, such as dog fouling, whether the grass is cut and whether the litter is picked up. I am sure that we could go on and look at a variety of other things. In Glasgow, we could look at the budget that is given to land and environmental services, for example. Should we be looking at some kind of crossover between how local authorities prioritise such things and the level of satisfaction about access to green and blue space to see whether there is a connectivity to budget lines?

Should we be looking at whether there is a strong evidence base to say that when local authority X made a cut in this area, unsurprisingly, satisfaction dipped? We could then be looking at the budget numbers based on outcomes for our constituents rather than arguing over what the numbers themselves are. That is my final thought on how we embed that budget scrutiny this early on in the process.

You can answer that or you can ignore all of that—it is up to you. We will go round the table, but I will start with Mr Wilson because he was the first to raise his hand to speak.

I agree with Julie Procter’s point about the ECCLR Committee and its statements on the budget. I would add that the health side of things is not just about quantity of life but quality of life. We had a little chat beforehand and I definitely agree that you might be prolonging someone’s life, but if you can improve mental and physical health through green space, that will not just save money; it is a better overall outcome.

12:30  

When it comes to budgets and how we define success, obviously how constituents feel is hugely important, but we have to look at other indicators as well. We need to look at our biodiversity metrics, at the amount of run-off that is coming off and the “urban heat island” effect. We need to look at all those things as measures of the success of our green space and not just public perception, because those things are hard to see, as a member of the public.

Thank you. This is everyone’s final opportunity to make a comment, so we will go round the table.

I will mention again the potential of budgets. We have a green space in Dunfermline for which we have had money from one council department for a cycleway in that green space, and we are getting money from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency for river restoration. It comes back to the point that we should see our green spaces as multifunctional assets. They can be an asset for the transport system or in relation to reducing flooding. If we can see them as more than just recreation spaces, they become really vital to communities.

That is similar to what Mr Wilson was saying.

I have two points to make. First, to pick up on Mr Gibson’s point, we have talked about the quality of green spaces: that is not just about all the things that make them good, but about what stops people using them. Is it litter? Is it dog fouling? What can be improved to make it more likely that people will use them?

The second point is a plea for the “friends of” groups. There are a lot of community volunteers out there who are willing and keen to help, but they often do not know how to do that. They need the links within the councils to be able to guide them in the right direction, to give them advice, and so on. We need to have the resources there and to make sure that there is funding to be able to provide that advice across all of the urban areas and beyond, not just in the areas where there are currently groups but going beyond that to get more groups set up.

Okay—that is helpful.

It is about encouraging an asset-based approach to our green spaces and to our parks so that we are valuing them for the services that they deliver, whether that is for people and health or in relation to the environmental element—reducing flooding, tackling climate change and so on. We need to put those green spaces and parks on local authorities’ books as assets, based on those services, rather than as liabilities based on the cost of maintenance. We then need to focus on quality and look at what the return on investment is and work out the benefit of preventative spend through investing in green space.

There is a robust amount of evidence that shows that green spaces are good for our health, so we are particularly concerned about the evidence that shows green space quality is declining, particularly in the most deprived areas. As I said, we are particularly concerned with health inequalities, so we are really interested in things that can narrow those inequalities. Scotland has some of the widest health inequalities in western Europe.

The good news is that there is evidence that green space can help to deliver that narrowing of health inequalities, so it is a pretty significant area in respect of health inequalities. The convener spoke about the committee perhaps scrutinising one particular aspect. I would encourage you to look at how to increase the number and improve the quality of green spaces—not just green spaces but places in the most deprived areas. There is significant evidence about the potential impact on health inequalities.

As the committee might expect, we dealt with many of the challenges today. Notwithstanding that, I get the opportunity to visit many parks across Scotland during the course of my work. We have wonderful assets but they are underused. It is a challenge to encourage much greater use of them. On the budget point, I would commend the research that we have done on valuing them in a completely different way, both in an economic sense and in relation to health and wellbeing.

Thank you, Mr Rennie. There is a lot of crossover there. At least two other committees will be looking at very similar things. I am sure that we will do more work on this but we will have to think carefully about how we position ourselves in relation to that work. That was another really useful round-table session. Thank you, everyone, for taking part. I think that we have had good value for money from the discussions.

That ends agenda item 2. We previously agreed to take agenda item 3 in private.

12:34 Meeting continued in private until 12:42.