Green space strategies

CABE Space held a training day in conjunction with the West Midlands Parks Forum in Dudley. The aim of the day was to share best practice and lessons learnt during the production and implementation of Green Space Strategies.

The seminar was attended by planning officers and parks officers from local authorities both within and outside the West Midlands region.

Following a welcome by Sally Orton chair of the West Midlands parks forum, the day began with presentations by Nicole Collomb from CABE Space and Howard Price a CABE Space enabler. Nicole set the strategic background to green space strategies and highlighted a number of current issues, including the role of strategies in adapting to climate change, and linking play strategies to greenspace strategies and integrating children’s play into the public realm.

Howard then spoke about his experience providing enabling support to Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council, identifying the importance of forming a working group with a variety of skills and interest and together creating a vision for the strategy.

Graham Hood, Head of Greenspaces at Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council and Peter Wilkinson from Bristol City Council then spoke about their experiences of producing greenspace strategies.

The afternoon breakout sessions enabled further discussion and questions, in particular focussing on community consultation and engagement and the relationship between planning and strategies.

The day identified a number of common themes and issues amongst those who attended, in particular the question of how greenspace strategies are funded, how strategies can be successful in securing additional revenue, the difficulties of setting locally based quality and quantity standards, and how to deal with oversupply or undersupply of greenspace and the pressure from housing developers on green space.