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 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, based on speaking to over 750 organisations and individuals representing both those promoting greater access such as sports bodies, as well as farmers and landowners. Key recommendations include improving existing access such as removing stiles and upgrading footpaths; promoting and educating people about how to behave responsibly in the countryside; expanding statutory rights for access to additional landscapes such as riversides and woods and for activities such as swimming, cycling and horse riding; and requiring that all children have at least one outdoor residential activity as part of their primary education.
In addition to promoting access to nature, the report recommends embedding green social prescribing as a core component of NHS and public health strategies. Current green social prescribing initiatives – 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 spread of green social prescribing activities.
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.
View online