Parks and green spaces strategy

Our parks and green spaces strategy outlines how we will manage 58 parks and green spaces between 2021 and 2031.

How we produced the strategy

In early 2020 we gathered together a group of stakeholders to work out what challenges that the parks and green spaces in Hackney are facing, who we should be talking to, and what areas our new strategy should focus on.

We held further meetings and sessions with people working in environment, conservation sustainability, planning, housing, sports, NHS and community organisations, and meetings and sessions with people from public health, residents, older people and young people.

We held team meetings with parks staff and focus groups with young people, people with special educational needs and disabilities, and staff working in our teams.

We also undertook research using planning and insight from consultations with Hackney residents and communities and other strategies relating to green spaces and play areas.

The public consultation

We took the draft strategy out to public consultation at the end of 2020 to check we’d got the focus of the strategy right and that people supported the draft vision and commitments. We also included lots of open text questions to give participants an opportunity to tell us their views, ideas and priorities.

Although the pandemic changed the way we undertook engagement, we were really pleased with the large numbers of people who took part:

• 645 participants completed the online questionnaire
• 307 took part in focus groups, polls or via other online methods
• 15 responded by email or in phone surveys

We used the comments, feedback and insight people shared with us to redraft the strategy, which was adopted by cabinet on 24 May 2021.

The main themes

There are three main themes of the strategy where we commit to:

• working with communities
• creating more welcoming spaces
• being more environmentally sustainable

The 30 commitments

Our new parks and green spaces strategy is based around 30 commitments that we plan to commit too over the next 10 years. A full list of the 30 commitments can be found in the parks and green spaces strategy and below is a brief explanation on how these commitments fit in with our main themes.

By working with communities we will include a more representative range of communities in decision making, improvement projects and in looking after our parks and green spaces.

We plan to do this by engaging with people and building skills by involving young and older people in designing and improving our parks and green spaces to reflect the recommendations of the Hackney Young Futures Commission and ageing well strategy.

By committing to creating more welcoming spaces in our parks and green spaces across Hackney we will physically improve and maintain a network of welcoming parks and green spaces that are safe, well used, attractive and looked after.

One way we plan to do this is by working with partners to prescribe and promote activities across parks and green spaces to improve people’s physical, mental and social health and wellbeing.

In order to make our parks and green spaces more environmentally sustainable we will be bold and ambitious in developing environmentally sustainable solutions, increasing climate resilience and improving the biodiversity of sites and the quality of life for our residents.

One commitment we have made in order to address the biodiversity crisis is to increase biodiversity across Hackney in line with the emerging local nature recovery plan, creating more wild areas across all parks and green spaces.

The strategy

• read the full parks and green spaces strategy

We produce annual reports each year to update on progress:

• parks annual report 2022/2023 (PDF 14.9mb)
• parks annual report 2021/2022 (PDF 13mb)
• parks annual report 2020/21
• parks annual report 2019/20
• parks annual report 2018/19
• parks annual report 2016/17

To find out how you can get involved with delivering these commitments please contact parks@hackney.gov.uk.