Green space generates £34bn in health benefits says FIT

Latest research from the charity group Fields in Trust (FIT) has revealed how parks and green spaces across the UK provide over £34bn in health and wellbeing benefits. The report calculates that parks provide a total economic value to each person in the UK of just over £30 per year. The actual benefits come in the form of people enjoying greater life satisfaction including both improved physical and mental health.

Helen Griffiths, CEO of Field in Trust said “Parks and green spaces saved the NHS at least £111m per year through prevented GP visits – enough to pay for more than 3,500 nurses”.

She continued: “This report clearly demonstrates the economic and wellbeing benefits that parks and green spaces bring to people across the UK. At a time when parks and green spaces are under threat this is valuable evidence that the loss of green space is hugely damaging to people’s welfare.”

BALI's Chief Executive Wayne Grills is an active board member for The Parks Alliance (TPA), a not-for-profit company set up to act as one voice for UK parks, representing the people and organisations that create, maintain, invest in and use the public green spaces that we are proud to have at the heart of British life. The group lobbies at local, regional, UK and EU levels to ensure that parks are properly funded, their roles recognised and developed, and that the benefits that they provide are clearly understood and recognised. 

This latest report by FIT will aid the work of The Parks Alliance members who have continued to lobby at government level on the importance of public green spaces on health and wellbeing.