'Love Parks Week' saved by Keep Britain Tidy

Keep Britain Tidy has stepped in to save Love Parks Week following the news that national parks charity GreenSpace was forced to close in March this year. Keep Britain Tidy already run the Green Flag Award scheme celebrating the country’s best parks and green spaces and the decision was taken that the flagship campaign should be rescued to run alongside it. Love Parks Week, which runs from 27th July to 4th August. Keep Britain Tidy has also announced that they will also be using Love Parks Week as the launch pad for building a new coalition of key partners to develop the week of action and, beyond this, build it into a year round ‘Love Parks’ campaign. The partnership is in its infancy but is likely to include Groundwork, the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens, as well as partner organisations in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Love Parks Week was launched in 2006 to raise awareness of the importance of green space. Last year, more than 1,000 events took place during the week, encouraging more than 1.4 million people to head down to a beautiful park or green space. Despite the tight timescale to deliver this year’s campaign, Keep Britain Tidy hope the week will be another huge success, encouraging hundreds of thousands of people to celebrate the country’s fantastic green spaces. Their Chief Executive Phil Barton said: “We know that  parks and green spaces are an essential asset to every community and make a major contribution to people’s health. That is why we were determined that Love Parks Week should be saved. By bringing together Love Parks Week and our Green Flag Award programme, our goal is to encourage millions more people to visit, enjoy and take pride in their local parks and green space. Ultimately, we believe everyone has a right to good quality green space on their doorstep and there is a huge body of research shows that they are an essential component of healthy, happy and strong communities. In addition, I’m excited at the prospect of a new coalition of organisations coming together in support of a broader year round Love Parks campaign. While it’s early days, the fact that we can use Love Parks as a rallying call to bring the sector together in the face of substantial budget cuts and threats to park services means we can continue to demonstrate just how valuable our parks and green spaces really are."

Carrickfergus Borough Council who have supported Love Parks Week over the years, has welcomed the move by Keep Britain Tidy. A Council spokeperson said "We showcase are Parks during Love Parks Week to celebrate that quality green spaces are essential to healthy, happy communities.  See the Council's Love Parks webpage at www.carrickfergus.org/loveparks."