If you are living in a neighbourhood built after the millennium, your local park is more likely to be smaller and you are likely to have to travel further to reach it (Figure 2). The shift in provision of green space extends into the private realm too. This trend is broadly the same in both England and Wales, Scottish data was not available. Our analysis of the People and Nature Survey suggests individuals living in post-2000 neighbourhoods are almost twice as likely to report having no access to a garden than those in developments dominated by housing from 1930 – 1999. If they do have access, they are 30% more likely to report that they don’t like their garden.

These gaps, driven by factors such as the collapse of council house building and the freedom given to developers to cut public amenities like green space in order to make higher profits, has a societal impact. Not only are communities living in post-2000 dominated developments 30% more likely to report that they do not ​“feel part of nature”, but they visit green space less too. Our statistical analysis suggests the decline in new green space provision after 2000 can now be associated with at least 9m fewer trips to green space a year (see methods below). Individuals living in post-2000 developments were around 5% less likely to visit green space once a week after other key variables (deprivation, age and dog ownership) were controlled for. The provision of green space in our newest neighbourhoods is substandard, and the impact can be seen in individual behaviours.

Local public green space is not just window dressing: it is a fundamental building block for a good quality of life. Its benefits, and role as an equaliser of wellbeing and opportunity have also been the subject of a recent surge in scientific investigation. New research demonstrating the role public green space plays in better educational outcomes, physical health and multiple dimensions of mental and social wellbeing, resilience, and recovery has edged green space provision into the scientific and public health mainstream. But there is no sign, as yet, of an entry into the national political mainstream. This needs to change.

NEF are supporting the Nature For Everyone petition, which is calling for a legal right to nature. The Nature for Everyone coalition, comprised of more than 80 nature, planning, health and equality organisations, is calling on the government to make equal access to a high-quality natural environment a key measure of success for the levelling-up agenda, establish a new legal duty for developers and public bodies to provide equal access to nature-rich green and blue spaces, and extending the Levelling Up Fund to green infrastructure projects.

Methods

Statistics on public perceptions of the availability of parks and people’s connection with nature, as well as data on visits to green space are derived from the Natural England People and Nature Survey (PANS) waves 2 – 10 spanning April-December 2020 (n=18,746). This sample is pandemic-impacted.

Headline figures on the provision of green space in neighbourhoods dominated by different age classes of housing are derived by combining ONS and Valuation Office Agency (VOA) (aggregated by Datadaptive) datasets for England and Wales using LSOA codes. The VOA data describes the median housing age in each Lower Layer Super Output Area (LSOA) by age class categories, as shown in the figure above. ONS green space provision data describes various parameters of green space provision within 1km of a postcode, averaged to each LSOA. The combined dataset can then be subjected to simple descriptive analysis to generate the outputs described above.

In order to estimate the number of lost visits to green space resulting from the declining level of green infrastructure provision in neighbourhoods dominated by more recent developments we link Datadaptive’s housing age class data with the PANS raw data, waves 2 – 10, again using LSOA codes. Once each survey respondent’s neighbourhood development age is identified, we conduct regression analysis to look at the correlation between neighbourhood age and individuals’ frequency of visits to green space, as captured in PANS.

As is standard in this sort of analysis (for example see this study in the British Medical Journal) we utilise a logistic regression model to look at the probability an individual who lives in each housing age class will visit their local green spaces at least once per week. A logistic regression performs well when analysing datasets with a categorical dependent variable and multiple categorical independent variables and has been established as the academic standard for studies in this field (see here for example). In this case, in addition to the housing development age, independent variables used as study control included: the index of multiple deprivation score of the area, the individual’s age, and whether they own a dog – all factors known to heavily influence rates of green space use.

Multiple model designs were tested in order to identify the model with the best fit. McFadden’s pseudo-R2 was utilised to test for model fit. Our final model obtained a McFaddens R2 of 0.038, an adequate result for a model of this nature. Age, deprivation, and dog ownership were all highly statistically significant. All 20th-century housing stock age classes were associated with higher probability of visiting green space when compared with 21st-century classes. Different housing stock age groups were associated with different levels of statistical significance, with P‑values ranging from 0.73 (1973 – 1982) to <0.01 (1993 – 1999). The full regression output can be downloaded here.