Prevention is better than cure

By Chris Worman MBE MPMA, Parks and Green Spaces Manager at South Derbyshire District Council

It’s difficult to believe it’s nearly 6 years since the Coronavirus pandemic, but how soon we have forgotten the valuable part that our parks and green spaces played during those dark days, and how people connected with their local green space.

Six years on we continue to hear time and time again on the NHS being overwhelmed, with our nation becoming more inactive, unhealthy and with a growing mental health crisis. Quite simply unless we start to think differently, we will not be able to fund our healthcare to the level that we all expect.

When you look at all the treatment costs associated with the wide range of illnesses, my grandmother's phrase of “prevention is better than cure” leaps into my head. Whilst our Victorian forbearers may not have got everything right, one of the better things they did was the creation of public parks and green spaces to improve the health and wellbeing of the nation. Undoubtedly this made a massive difference to the nation's health in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras.

There is now a plethora of research and data which shows being outdoors is good for people physically and for their mental health. GP’s are now supporting “green prescriptions” encouraging patients to “go for a walk in the park” rather than prescribing tablets. I can’t help but think that as the “home of parks” and the 6th richest country in the world we should be world leaders in the “natural health service”. However, other countries seem to understand this concept better and are investing heavily in local parks for the health of their communities.

Time after time the huge benefits of parks and green spaces are just ignored by UK decision makers and only valued by the cost of maintaining them. Such short-sighted cyclical politics is one of the reasons why our health costs are spiralling out of control, with politicians of all persuasions only looking to short term solutions.

We have lost so much during austerity, leaving many local green spaces unmaintained with poor or no facilities, no staff, unsafe and little reason to visit. Yet with investment, these spaces which you can find in every village, town and city across our great nation could be green health centres, where people would benefit from being more active, outdoors, and close to nature.

However, people will only use green spaces that provide a quality, safe and well-maintained environment delivering facilities for the local community which can encourage people to be more active than they otherwise might have been. It’s the simple things like choosing to walk rather than take a car journey that will make a large difference. Taking your children to the local park, rather than traveling for an “escape room experience”. Or simply sitting on a park bench to de-stress and help with our mental health. (The times I’ve had to do that over my years in local government!)

In today’s political language, it’s a great invest to save project!

The Office for National Statistics 2024 natural capital accounts identified the health benefits from recreation at £489 billion.

Research shows that frequent use of parks is worth £30 billion per year to the British public and by encouraging the public to meet their recommended weekly activity targets could improve the quality of life by £2 billion pounds per annum. (Preventive Medicine Volume 91, October 2016, Pages 383-38) This could release 40% of the current healthcare budget to be reallocated. Only a fraction of this would be needed to fund our parks, allowing for funding to be realised for other government priorities. (Future Parks Accelerator).

Everyone I speak to recognises the value of parks and green spaces and when spaces are under threat, communities come together to fight for them.

With all that’s going on in the world today, the climate and ecological emergency and cost of living crisis, surely then the time is now right to take our parks and green spaces seriously?

Unless we do, the multitude of benefits will be lost, and our health and environmental costs will continue to spiral out of control to a point from which it will be unrecoverable.

What will our grandchildren and great grandchildren make of the decisions that we are taking today?

Parks remain a great leveller. They should be above all politics and be recognised and valued for all their benefits: from the massive impact on our health and wellbeing, supporting sustainable communities, helping with climate change mitigation and supporting biodiversity rather than just the binary cost of maintaining them.

The challenge remains on how to convince our national and local leaders to start to make a positive change.

I am only one small voice but passionately believe Parks and Green Space are essential infrastructure and should therefore be funded as such. It will need vision, strong leadership and cross-party collaboration to make a positive change but we could make a real difference that would benefit generations to come.

A bit about Chris Worman MBE

Parks and Green Spaces Manager, South Derbyshire District Council

Chris Worman MBE has over 41 years’ experience in the parks industry and is currently South Derbyshire District Council’s Parks and Green Spaces Manager and a national advocate for parks and green spaces.

He started his career in 1984 at the age of 16 at Leicester City Council and has worked for Hinckley & Bosworth Borough Council and Rugby Borough Council.

Being passionate about parks and green spaces for as long as he can remember, he became a Green Flag Award judge from the very start of the awards and over the past 29 years volunteering has had the opportunity to judge 100’s of parks both around the UK and beyond. He has undertaken a number of international judging tours including Spain, The United Arab Emirates, Mexico, America and Saudi Arabia

For his service to the Green Flag Awards and public parks he was awarded an MBE in the Queens 90th Birthday honours in 2016.

In 2017 Chris was appointed to the UK Governments Parks Action Group as the parks industry representative and in 2024 was appointed chair of the UK Government’s new Parks Woking Group.

Chris is one of the founder members of the Parks Management Association and is a member of The Royal Parks Guild.

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