Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the green social prescribing projects announced in July 2020.

In October 2020, the Government launched a £5.77 million programme, led by Defra, aimed at preventing and tackling mental ill health through green social prescribing. The programme has already recorded over 6,000 referrals.

The programme is being evaluated by a consortium led by the University of Sheffield, and is assessing processes, outcomes and value for money, in order to inform implementation and future policy and practice. The interim evaluation report provides us with some very encouraging findings about the success of the programme so far and is due to be published shortly. A full evaluation report will follow in June 2023.

After the programme closes in March 2023, we will continue to take action to embed and scale green social prescribing across Government and within society.

The Environmental Improvement Plan sets out our current policy position on green social prescribing. The Secretary of State does not plan to make any further statement.