The pot of money councils receive is getting smaller, and with homelessness on the rise, essential services to pay for from taking care of vulnerable children to collecting the recycling, everyone is having to make cuts. It is easy to see how funding for green spaces could slip down the list of priorities.
And, according to this infographic by environmental charity Groundwork, it has, with councils apparently slashing funding for green spaces by 30 per cent.
Can the community step into the breach, Big Society-style?
Groundwork has carried out an online survey of 400 people, and the charity has come up with some encouraging findings that just confirm that people value their parks and green spaces. But also shows how far there is to go. See below for the full infographic, but it’s striking that even out of a sample of people who actively chose to answer this survey online, the vast majority are not involved in any kind of ‘friends of the common’ type of organisation.
