Green Flag Award | |
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Standards organization | Keep Britain Tidy On behalf of MHCLG. |
Effective region | Worldwide; primarily United Kingdom. |
Effective since | 1996 |
Product category | Parks, publicly accessible spaces. |
Type of standard | Industry |
Website | www |
The Green Flag Award is an international accreditation given to publicly accessible parks and open spaces, managed under licence from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, a UK Government department, by Keep Britain Tidy, who also administers the scheme in England.
The Green Flag Award was introduced in 1996, and first awarded in 1997, by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) with the intention of establishing agreed standards of good management, to help to justify and evaluate funding and to raise park attendance. The scheme was managed by Civic Trust, on MHCLG's behalf, until they lost the contract and the charity went bust in 2009. [1]
The scheme has been managed by Keep Britain Tidy since 2012, [2] with sister organisations Keep Scotland Beautiful, Keep Wales Tidy and TIDY Northern Ireland delivering the scheme across the UK, and various other bodies delivering worldwide.
Green Flags on Display in Manor Park, London; Boscombe Chine Gardens, Dorset; Baysgarth Park, Lincolnshire; and Bournemouth Gardens, Dorset. |
The scheme's aim is to promote standards of good management and best-practice amongst the green space sector. It is described by its issuers, Keep Britain Tidy, as an "internationally recognised award that is a benchmark for well-managed green space". As of October 2021, 2227 parks and open spaces held a Green Flag Award. [3]
While public parks make up most of the awardees, the Green Flag Award is also issued to sites with different uses, such as Loughborough University and Bluewater Shopping Centre, for the management of their grounds. [4]
The Green Flag Award is managed under licence from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, a UK Government department, by Keep Britain Tidy, who also administers the scheme in England [5] and several other countries, including Australia and the United States. [6]
The owners of spaces that wish to hold the accreditation, pay a fee to be assessed by volunteer judges on an annual basis with a process involving secret shoppers and inspection of both the park and the owner's management plans. The aspects that spaces are judged on are: [7]
A failure to meet the judges' standards can result in the accreditation being withdrawn; one example of this is North London's Finsbury Park which lost its Green Flag in 2018. [8]
Finsbury Park is a public park in the London neighbourhood of Harringay. It is in the area formerly covered by the historic parish of Hornsey, succeeded by the Municipal Borough of Hornsey. It was one of the first of the great London parks laid out in the Victorian era. The park borders the neighbourhoods of Harringay, Finsbury Park, Stroud Green, and Manor House.
RHS Britain in Bloom is the largest horticultural campaign in the United Kingdom. It was first held in 1963, initiated by the British Tourist Board based on the example set by Fleurissement de France, which since 1959 has promoted the annual Concours des villes et villages fleuris. It has been organised by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) since 2002.
Keep Britain Tidy is a UK-based independent environmental charity. The organisation campaigns to reduce litter, improve local places and prevent waste. It has offices in Wigan and London.
Natural England is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It is responsible for ensuring that England's natural environment, including its land, flora and fauna, freshwater and marine environments, geology and soils, are protected and improved. It also has a responsibility to help people enjoy, understand and access the natural environment.
The London Borough of Haringey maintains 240 hectares of parks and open spaces. By 2015, 20 of these were accredited with a Green Flag Award. Until their disbandment in April 2009, the parks were patrolled by the Haringey Parks Constabulary.
Beechwood Park is a thirty-acre public park situated in the eastern Beechwood area of the city of Newport, South Wales.
The Royal Parks of London are lands that were originally used for the recreation, mostly hunting, of the royal family. They are part of the hereditary possessions of The Crown, now managed by The Royal Parks Limited, a charity which manages eight royal parks and certain other areas of parkland in London. The Royal Parks charity was created as a company limited by guarantee in March 2017 and officially launched in July 2017. Its chief executive is Andrew Scattergood.
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Bow Creek Ecology Park is a small open space along Bow Creek tidal estuary of the River Lea in Canning Town in Newham, in east London. It is operated by the regional Lee Valley Park system.
Moss Bank Park is a 34.25 hectares park in Bolton, Greater Manchester, England. It consists of open space, woodland, gardens and other facilities. Moss Bank Park has been awarded the Green Flag Standard in 2008 and 2009. The Green Flag Scheme is a national standard for public parks and green spaces that aims to raise standards across the UK. This award puts Moss Bank Park alongside Brighton Pier, London Zoo, Alton Towers and the Norfolk Broads.
Building for Life, Building for Life 12, Adeliladu am Oes 12 Cymru and Building for a Healthy Life are design tools for improving the quality of new homes and neighbourhoods used across England and Wales. The current version in use in England is Building for a Healthy Life .
The Big Tree Plant was a Government-sponsored campaign in England in 2010, to promote the planting of trees in neighbourhoods where people lived and worked. The national campaign ran over four years from 2011 to 2015 and met its objective to plant one million trees.
Martineau Gardens is a community garden on Priory Road in Edgbaston, Birmingham, England. It adjoins the Priory Hospital on Bristol Road. It features over two acres of woodland and formal gardens. The Gardens are administered by a registered charity and are a member of the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens.
Keep Wales Tidy is a Welsh national voluntary environmental charity which works towards achieving "a clean, safe and tidy Wales". It works in partnership with Local Authorities, schools and community groups, and organisations such as Waste Awareness Wales and Environment Wales in order to achieve these goals.
Musgrave Park is a public park in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Neighbourhoods Green is an English partnership initiative which works with social landlords and housing associations to highlight the importance of open and green space for residents and raise the overall quality of design and management with these groups.
The Inch is a district of Edinburgh, Scotland, located to the south of Inch Park in the south of the city. It is located 2 miles south south-east of central Edinburgh. It incorporates the Inch housing development, Inch Park and the category A listed Inch House, a former country house now used as a community centre. The associated Inch Doocot or dovecot, also a category A listed building, is situated close by, west of Gilmerton Road.
A UK Holocaust Memorial memorial and learning centre was first proposed in 2015 to preserve the testimony of British Holocaust survivors and concentration camp liberators and to honour Jewish and other victims of Nazi persecution, including Roma, homosexual, and disabled people.
Keep Scotland Beautiful is an environmental charity based in Scotland, which aims “to make Scotland a cleaner, greener and more sustainable place to live, work and visit.” The organisation campaigns and educates on a range of environmental issues including climate change and litter reduction.
Northbrook Park is a public park located on Baring Road south of Lee Green and north of Grove Park in the London Borough of Lewisham, southeast London, England. It is roughly 9 acres (3.6 ha) in size, and contains a large central field bounded by trees, a children's playground, with a sandpit and splash pool, a multipurpose game court, two football pitches, outdoor gym equipment and a "legal" graffiti wall. The park was previously a field named Ten-Acre Field, despite actually being 7 acres (2.8 ha), and part of the Baring Estate of Lee. In 1898, Thomas Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook gifted part of his family's estate to public use in commemoration of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. The Park was designed by Lt Col J J Sexby, Chief Officer of the London County Council's Parks Department, then was officially opened on 14 March 1903. In the past the park contained a larger playground, a paddling pool, a pond, a bowling green and a tennis court.