Source · Select Committees · Environmental Audit Committee
Recommendation 3
3
Rejected
Paragraph: 35
Nature-based solutions are crucial for cooling, but the green infrastructure framework lacks wide implementation.
Recommendation
Nature-based solutions to climate change, such as parks, trees, water bodies and green infrastructure, have significant cooling effects as well as multiple co-benefits (for example, for health, wellbeing, air quality, flood resilience and biodiversity). Increasing the amount of green space is one of the most important tools in tackling the impacts of heat, especially in urban areas. Natural England’s Green Infrastructure Framework, incorporating the Urban Greening Factor, is therefore a significant and welcome step forward in setting out how green infrastructure can be best designed and implemented; however, the framework only applies to new developments, and evidence suggests that it is not yet being put into practice at scale by local authorities.
Government Response Summary
The government acknowledges the benefits of green infrastructure but states that primary responsibility for expanding urban green space lies with local authorities and declines to mandate the Green Infrastructure Framework. It references existing funds but rejects central intervention or mandating action.
Paragraph Reference:
35
Government Response
Rejected
HM Government
Rejected
The government recognises that well-designed and managed green infrastructure provides multiple benefits at a range of scales, as the Committee has outlined. We welcome the Committee’s acknowledgement of the utility of the Green Infrastructure Framework. As the Committee highlights, this will be most useful (and, indeed, was deliberately designed) for planning authorities and developers when they are bringing forward new proposals – either through the local plan or through individual planning applications. This should mean, over the years ahead, that further progress is made. The Committee also recommends that the Government take action to expand urban green space. The primary responsibility for urban planning in individual areas sits with local authorities and it is for them to plan, design and execute new proposals for expanding specific green areas, respecting the devolution settlement that we have in place with local government. The Government has in the past offered taxpayer subsidy to support this including, in 2022, launching the £9M Levelling Up Parks Fund (LUPF) to improve access to green spaces in disadvantaged neighbourhoods across the UK. Grants have been given to, and administered by, 85 eligible local authorities, to deliver new or improved green spaces in over 100 of the neighbourhoods most deprived of green space across the UK. Data from Natural England and Office for National Statistics (ONS) has been used to determine the eligible places by identifying the neighbourhoods where high deprivation coincides with poor green infrastructure. With regards to the Green Infrastructure Framework, the Government has not chosen to mandate this at this time – it is important that we allow local authorities the space to develop their own policies and, from a first principles perspective, Government should not mandate everything. We would expect local authorities to develop plans to improve green spaces in their area and, should they not, we would hope that voters would indicate their displeasure at the ballot box. With regards to potential measures to incentivise green roofs, the Government keeps its use of taxpayer subsidy under constant review and will continue to do so.