Outdoors for All – report from the All Party Parliamentary Group for Outdoor Recreation and Access to Nature

A recently published report , Outdoors For All, goes beyond promoting spending time in nature, to recognise the need to make green and blue spaces accessible. While the NHS 10-year plan includes spending time in nature as part of promoting a healthy lifestyle and a move towards prevention rather than treatment, achieving this will be challenging given that 20 million people do not live within 15 minutes of an accessible green or blue space. This is further aggravated by factors such as local paths being poorly marked and maintained. Furthermore, many green and blue spaces are not well served by public transport.

Outdoors for All, a report from the All Party Parliamentary Group for Outdoor Recreation and Access to Nature, makes recommendations for how to improve access to nature that include embedding green social prescribing as a core component of NHS and public health strategies. Current green social prescribing initiatives – usually involving regular sessions supervised by trained leaders – offer promise for reducing preventable disease and improving physical and mental wellbeing, but are fragmented, underfunded and often do not align with NHS strategies or broader public health frameworks. Instead, according to the report, green social prescribing should be mandated as a core component of NHS and public health strategies and should be funded accordingly to enable the expansion of green social prescribing.

Green social prescribing activities are usually organised in sites designed to facilitate accessibility and often occur within local green spaces. This overcomes many of the accessibility issues associated with accessing the countryside. Green social prescribing activities are therefore an important means of improving access to nature engagement for many of the people who are least served by the current access to green and blue spaces.