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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the commitment in the Environmental Improvement Plan that everyone should live within 15 minutes’ walk of a green or blue space, what assessment she has made of the implications for that policy of the proportion of (a) waterways and (b) inland blue space in England that has a statutory right of public access.

We know that there are significant health and wellbeing benefits to spending time in nature. That is why we announced in our Environmental Improvement Plan in January our intention to work across Government to ensure that everyone lives within a 15 minute walk of a blue or green space. We also committed to work in parallel to reduce barriers to access.

Achieving delivery of these cross government commitments, to bring nature closer to people and reduce barriers to accessing it, is a long term goal. We are currently focused on developing the right modelling tools and indicators to allow us to accurately measure the baseline, identify where to target efforts and to track future progress, engaging closely with stakeholders as we do so. At the same time we continue to deliver existing work across Government in this area, such as the Access for All programme, the Green Infrastructure Framework, the Levelling Up Parks Fund and the Walking and Cycling Infrastructure Strategy.

Access on waterways, and other inland blue spaces such as lakes, where there is no established public right of navigation should be arranged with the relevant landowners through local voluntary access agreements, to ensure the interests of all parties concerned are taken into account.