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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure the preservation of green spaces within (a) Romford constituency and (b) the London Borough of Havering.

The Government recognises the importance of providing access to the outdoors for people’s health and wellbeing and is working to ensure this is safe and appropriate. We committed in our Environmental Improvement Plan to work across government to help ensure that everyone lives within 15 minutes’ walk of a green or blue space.

The Government is delivering a number of policies to protect access to green spaces including in urban areas. Examples of these include:

• Delivering the £9 million Levelling Up Parks Fund to improve green space in more than 100 disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the UK.
• The launch of the Green Infrastructure Framework: Principles and Standards for England in January 2023 which shows what good green infrastructure looks like and will help local authorities, developers and communities to improve provision in their area
• Local Nature Recovery Strategies will identify locations where action for nature recovery would be particularly beneficial, encouraging the creation of more green spaces, including in urban areas
• Implementing a number of rights of way reforms which will streamline the process for adding new or lost footpaths to the rights of way network.

Three Sites of Special Scientific Interest are situated within the London Borough of Havering supporting some of the largest areas of wetland across greater London. Two of the three sites are managed under agri-environment schemes with Natural England working closely with landowners in managing these sites with another eight agri-environment schemes protecting important grassland, wetland and woodland edge habitat across the borough.