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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps is she taking with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to help ensure that social prescribing for (a) young people and (b) adults promotes access to the natural environment.

The Government’s Green Social Prescribing Programme was established to examine how to increase use and connection to the natural environment through referral to green and/or blue social prescribing services within communities in England to prevent and tackle mental ill health. It has achieved over 7,000 referrals to nature-based activities over the course of the programme, and the evidence suggests that the programme has had a very strong service take-up compared with traditional mental health support services.

We expect to publish our interim evaluation report shortly, with the full evaluation report to follow later this year.

We are committed to supporting the scale-up of green social prescribing across England, as confirmed in the Government’s Environmental Improvement Plan, published on 31st January 2023.

We have established a cross-governmental working group to advocate for green social prescribing across government and are taking several practical steps to build on the good work of the programme. For example, we are in the process of commissioning research into green activity providers to understand better what barriers they face and how we can help with scale-up, and completing the feasibility stages of three clinical research trials, hopefully progressing to full trial stage by Summer 2023.

Within Countryside Stewardship farmers can apply for the supplement WS4 which enables them to create public access within woodland on their farm. There are approximately 900 hectares of land enrolled in this option which provides people of all ages access to the natural environment and contributes to the public’s mental health and wellbeing.