Barking and Dagenham Open Space Strategy and Corporate Natural Capital Account (CNCA)

The new Green Spaces Strategy consisted of the following elements:

• A quantitative and qualitative assessment of the borough’s parks and open spaces.
• A review of the local, regional and national policies and strategies that would influence the development of the new parks strategy
• A review of strategy, provision and initiatives in neighbouring boroughs and the assessment of cross-border partnership working opportunities
• New policies and sub-strategies for events, food growing and play and the rolling out of the adopted Outdoor Playing Pitch Strategy across the borough’s parks
• The assessment of alternative delivery models for parks and open spaces including the encouragement of commercial and income-generating activities
• Landscape masterplans for nine of the borough’s major parks to incorporate emerging thinking in respect of delivery models and in accordance with the parks needs assessment
• The development of a corporate natural capital account
• Extensive engagement and consultation with local residents, communities, users, non-users, partners stakeholders and Members.

Opportunity for green infrastructure assets to deliver a range of economic, social and environmental benefits whose economic value has been quantified by the natural capital account.

Several contemporary drivers formed the context and challenges to be addressed by this project:
• Changes in planning guidance -the NPPF now provides a more simplified framework for strategies.
• The impact of austerity and reduced public funding for parks.
• A growing focus on the role of parks and greenspaces on improving the health and wellbeing of communities.
• Barking and Dagenham’s growth agenda with the need for new homes and infrastructure which must be supported by improving amenity.
• Enhancing natural capital to improve resilience against the impact of climate change and unlock potential funding from other sources not normally associated with park development and management.

The project required in-depth consultation methods including online questionnaires, social media, workshops, focus groups, events and face-to-face discussion meetings.

The strategy’s influence was far-reaching, influencing the Council’s future investment to those areas of most need to positively address the health and well-being agenda for the borough.

The audits and CNCA provided a clear and comprehensive evidence base for future decision making and helped unlock other potential sources of funding for ecosystem services such as flood alleviation, where funding is not normally focussed on parks development and management.

The strategy formed innovative park policies for play, food growing, events strategy and park policy with input from leading industry experts, based on current research.

The strategy was developed with extensive collaboration with Council Officers to ensure it was carefully aligned to reinforce and compliment other current and emerging strategies to ensure it would succeed.

The strategy enabled the creation of a single, more efficient, integrated service within the council, drawing together policy, strategy, master planning, funding, capital delivery and community engagement functions.

This project uniquely demonstrates an overarching comprehensive strategy, shaped with full consideration for the views of residents, stakeholders and partners and has provided the council with ‘quality trend’ information to provide a clear strategic plan across the whole portfolio in addition to individual sites.