The Parks Alliance – the national voice of UK parks – has announced that Nesta, Heritage Lottery Fund and the Big Lottery Fund have published a report ‘Learning to Rethink Parks’ which presents the lessons from Rethinking Parks, an 18 month programme designed to find and test ways for Britain’s national parks to source new sustainable funding in the future.
The report’s key findings are:
- Public parks need to diversify their funding sources to meet size of cuts
- New partners and people will windows key buy contribute to parks
- Cost savings needn’t be at the expense of people’s enjoyment of parks
It adds that, mobilising the skills and energy of businesses, supporting people into employment whilst improving green space, using less intensive planting techniques and tapping into the public’s willingness to give have all shown impact in reducing costs for running parks.
However, no one idea tested through Rethinking Parks is forecast to completely replace local authority funding. You can see more here.