Keep Britain Tidy’s new survey shows that more than half of the country’s parks have had to pull in extra resources to deal with the issues, including litter and anti-social behaviour, since lockdown was eased.
Of those, 81% had to spend more on clearing up litter, 79% on bin emptying and 72% on maintaining public order or enforcing lockdown rules.
The local authorities who responded to the survey – more than 100 of them in total – said they had spent, on average, an extra £33,000 on managing parks in the past three months, with one reporting increased spending of up to £150,000. Councils also reported clearing up, on average, 57 tonnes of additional waste from their parks.
All this has come at a time when local authorities’ resources have been stretched by the challenges of dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic and 42% of local authorities reported having lower staffing levels than usual.
Despite this, almost half (46%) say they will need to put extra staff in to manage parks over the summer holiday period and will need, on average, to spend an additional £47,000 to cope.
Now, to support parks staff over the long summer holiday period, Keep Britain Tidy and its Centre for Social Innovation has launched a new campaign under the umbrella of ‘Love Parks’.
Richard McIlwain, Deputy Chief Executive of Keep Britain Tidy, said: “The UK was the birthplace of the public park and their value was recognised by many people during lockdown, as a haven of greenspace for exercise and relaxation.
“But, as lockdown measures have eased over the past three months, we’ve seen a significant minority of people abuse these treasured spaces, with shocking scenes of anti-social behaviour, leading to littering, deposit of human waste and abuse of parks staff.
“Clearly, effective and well-targeted enforcement will always have a role to play in curbing this behaviour, however, we also want to inspire people to look after our parks and the key workers who look after them. Hence, this campaign, which will be available to every local authority in the country and which is based on behavioural science, will act as an effective nudge to actively encourage people to treat our beautiful parks – and the amazing staff who work in them – with respect this summer.”
The campaign has been funded as part of the government’s Coronavirus response and will be bolstered with additional campaign activity led by Defra over the summer both online and in locations near to beaches and national parks.
Councillor Gerald Vernon-Jackson, Chair of the Local Government Association’s Culture, Tourism and Sport Board, said: “Councils are working hard to keep parks and public spaces clean.
“Services have been disrupted during the pandemic but staff are determined to tackle a backlog of parks maintenance as they return from temporary redeployment to other areas, including supporting bin collections and helping shielded residents.
“Responsibility for clearing up litter lies with the person dropping it or leaving it behind. Councils need the public’s cooperation to help keep parks, green spaces and streets free from litter.
“Littering is always unacceptable – it is unsightly, tarnishes our local environments and council taxpayers are left to pick up the costs to clear it up. Councils run a range of awareness and clean-up campaigns, but fines can be issued to people who persistently ignore warnings.”
