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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of green social proscribing on levels of mental health and wellbeing.

The Government recognises the health and wellbeing benefits of outdoor access and will continue to champion these benefits, which the Green Social Prescribing programme has evidenced.

Phase 1 of the Green Social Prescribing programme ran until March 2023 and was very successful, achieving around 8,500 referrals and demonstrating statistically significant improvements in participants mental health.

As in the first phase of the programme, there will be an evaluation report developed for Phase 2 of the programme, which ran from April 2024 until March 2025. We expect to publish the phase 2 report in early 2026.