Carl McClean

Um, I hate to start with a cliché, but I started in this sector when I was 16 on the tools, on the, on the mowers, and it's just really inspiring to see the development in software and technology and data in this industry that's really helping manage and maintain parks and green spaces. So thanks to Mark and KaarbonTech for putting on the conference and for inviting me to speak today about Green Flag Award. We've already heard a lot today about the benefits of parks and green spaces in particular. Um, the good thing is there's been a lot of research and a lot of data already delivered that uh proves the wide ranging benefits that these green spaces can provide to, Individuals, communities, and cities and towns as a whole, not just from a health and wellbeing perspective, but right through to tackling climate change and even things like economic development and prosperity based on good quality, well managed parks and green spaces. And on an international level this is recognized as well, and you know, the UN SDGs have been around for quite some time now, the sustainable development goals, but a lot of local authorities in England and across the UK are using them, and it's really interesting if you look closely at how much parks and green spaces feed into. Uh, achieving the targets of the UN SDGs, and these are just 8 on the screen at the moment that we've identified where through Green Flag Award and through well managed parks and green spaces that you can be reaching and working towards the SDGs to improve the quality of life for your citizens and uh residents. And you noticed I used the word well managed there, because those benefits, um, and those, um, wide ranging improvements, they're not really any use to anybody if parks are poorly managed. Um, and these are just some examples on the screen from across the UK of parks that have a, have had a real lack of investment, lack of funding, staffing and resources. Which has led to them falling into decline and becoming poor quality, so those benefits are only realized if the park is good and well managed. But this leads us to another question which I hope a lot of the uh talks we're hearing today will help address as well. But Green Flag does that as well. It set out originally to answer this question of well what do we mean by a good park? Because that's a really spurious word to use, especially at a political level, it's very difficult to identify this park is good and this one needs improvement. So back in 1996, a group of organizations and NGOs got together to try and define what they meant by good, and they worked with the parks and green spaces sector, with local authorities and with experts from other industries around uh public spaces to define what, what they meant by good parks and green spaces. Um, you can see some of the examples on the screen and we, as a, as an organization, as a program, we interact with a lot of our organizations on an annual basis to make sure that this concept of good parks is kept up to date in line with current policy and standard. And so originally it didn't just set out to give all the good parks a gold star and a pat on the back. It was actually there to raise the standard of parks up to that level and to help them reach that minimum standard of quality. And in turn, the idea was by identifying a minimum standard that would then support parks and green space managers to um. You know, meet that standard and, and try and ask for the staffing funding and resources that they needed. And then in the long run, the idea was this would support their ability to leverage political backing, political awareness of the importance of parks and green spaces. And you've got to remember back in 1996, this was a very new concept. So then it was very innovative and it's evolved over the years, uh, over two decades, uh, to adapt to the current climate as well. And so today we, we recognize that standard of good in parks and green spaces around the world. Um, and we do this on a sliding scale through a criteria which I'm gonna talk a little bit about later. Um, but the standard is good. There are many parks and green spaces in the Green Flag Award that are up here, excellent and exceptional, but the minimum standard is good and that makes it achievable for a lot of local authorities to make sure. They are meeting that minimum standard and it also gives recognition to managing parks to just a good standard is difficult enough in itself in the current climate. And so from those humble beginnings in England in 1996, where I think we had 7 applications in the first year. Uh, so far this season, the 2024, 2025 season, uh, we're celebrating, uh, it's actually over 2.500 winners across 19 countries. Uh, we have a. Uh, training a trained pool of over 1000 Green Flag Award judges um across the UK and abroad, and we have 9 national operators that help deliver the program. So Keep Britain Tidy, the charity I work for and a couple of my colleagues in the audience. We run the Green Flag Award in England and license the award internationally to other countries. Um, and the, not a lot of people know, but the program is actually owned. By the UK government, Ministry for Housing Communities and Local Government. So actually this is the government's own standard for parks and green spaces. So it's a surprise that not all of the parks and green spaces in our country are meeting that, the government's own minimum standard. And the benefits of the award are pretty wide ranging. Different applicants will use the award for different reasons, but to focus on two today, the first one is to celebrate, uh, the, the time and effort that goes into managing and maintaining parks and green spaces, to recognize the people that do that. But it also acts as a mechanism to protect parks and green spaces, to protect the investment that's put into them, to make sure that they don't go into decline like the photos that we saw earlier. Um, and to make sure that the teams that manage and maintain those parks are supported and have a, a framework behind them to make sure those benefits that I talked about in the first slide are realized in perpetuity and not just for a temporary period after capital funding. And so what makes the Green Flag Award such a success is we've got um a recognized framework that's been developed in cooperation with the sector for over 28 years now. Um, it's included in our guidance manual called Raising the Standard. This is a free guidance manual available on our website in PDF form. Um, and it's roughly clustered into 8 key criteria and then broken into 27 sub criterias. And this is a really useful framework because anything in the realm of parks and green space management and maintenance can be slotted in to one of these categories if you look through our guidance. So it's quite wide ranging and it's reasonably flexible in the way it's applied as well. In terms of, we have hundreds of woodlands and nature reserves that are green flag award, and obviously hundreds of municipal parks. Those are two completely different types of sites, but they both use the same standard. And this applies to the UK and to 18 other countries around the world. So a really flexible framework, uh, that's been tried and tested for 2 decades. There's two criteria before you even get to applying. The site must be free to access, and it must have a management plan in place. Um, now Doug's talk earlier, uh, mentioned about combining this idea of data, facts and figures, you know, your statistics, your maintenance schedule. Where the management plan comes in is that combines that those facts and figures in the data with a story about. Where the park is at the moment and what the vision is for the future. And that's really important to the Green Flag Award program that you're telling both sides of that, you know, left brain and right brain, different types, combining facts and figures with storytelling, because actually the storytelling side of things is sometimes much more powerful from a political perspective to get that funding, staffing and resources that you need. And this is also a hugely respected framework. So, um, across the UK uh park managers are using the Green Flag Award and have been doing so for a long time. And whilst it's individually site specific for each park, a lot of councils like Norwich, for example, are using it as a green space strategy to identify key parks uh around the country, around their city or town. That they want to bring up to that minimum standard, and then that also helps with that political level as well, to have a green space strategy with the government's own standard as a KPI for those parks. And the proof is in the pudding in terms of some of the organizations that uh are using the Green Flag Award program. I think around 80% of UK local authorities are engaged in the program. Um, and a lot of our judges are also applicants at the same time, so they're park managers, uh, and parks officers. And not just in the UK, you can see Seattle there just won the first Green Flag Award last year. Auckland in New Zealand has around 10 Green Flag Awards for the city. They've been engaged in the program for about 8 years now. Um, and also contractors, ID Verdi celebrate over 100 parks and green spaces that they manage, have achieved Green Flag Award, and they're actively involved in the process of application. Um, and other organizations like the Canals and Rivers Trust who manage very different types of spaces, but as I said earlier, the, the framework can be applied to those waterways as well. And I dropped in my local town council as well, Yeovil, the heart of Somerset. Just because I want to point out that it's not just the major cities that are engaged in this program. In fact, most of our applications and winners come from small local neighbourhood parks, parish councils, town councils, that sort of thing. Another strength in how Green Flag or protects uh parks is through the feedback system. Now today we're hearing a lot about data and how important it is. Um, Green Flag Award is a little bit different in that the feedback you get is very qualitative. You don't get a huge amount of data to crunch through. What we do get is that story from a judge telling you exactly what you need to do to improve your park. Um, feedback is structured in two forms. You get strengths based on what you're doing well, so, um, that's complementary, but you also get recommendations in areas that you need to improve. And that's really one of the most important things going back to what our guidance manual is called, raising the standard, because even though you might win the Green Flag Award one year, you should be working to improve for next year to reapply and hopefully get a higher score in the following year. And that's another important thing to mention, this is an annual certification process, um, because we know how quickly parks can decline with a lack of correct management and maintenance. So from the get-go, Green Flag Award has always been an annual system where every single one of those 25,000 sites gets a judging visit by a trained judge every single year, and every single site gets a feedback report every single year. Um So we go through this cycle on an annual basis through set windows right through to the award celebration. And being annual, it just keeps the focus on, you know, team motivation, keeping your focus on the vision of the management plan, checking how that's going against what's going on site, and all these things coalesce together to make a really robust uh protection system for parks. And again, this is what's made it so successful around the world. Uh, I've got some photos here from Mexico. Uh, this is in Antwerp where I think they now have 7 Green Flag Awards around the city using it as a strategy. Uh, in the UAE in the Middle East, we've just announced 71 winners across 9 municipalities in the UAE. Massive growth there, um, and they're really working hard on the quality of their parks and green spaces, and even as far away as Australia. Where the program is is recognized in major cities such as Brisbane, Adelaide, er, and Melbourne. But it's not just about those sites, it's, it's also A very people oriented program, and that's why I've got a slide here about our volunteer judges. So these are the experts, this is where the knowledge comes from within the Green Flag Award program. Uh, keep it and tidy, we deliver the program and our, our national partners deliver the program, but it wouldn't be a success without the help, uh, and the dedication of people from the parks and green space sector, our volunteer judges, and I think there's a few of them in the room already. Um, these are the people with the knowledge that go to all those sites every year, they volunteer their time and they provide the knowledge they've already got. Uh, to share it with the site applicants through the feedback report in a written format, but also through the site visit, it's a conversation that's happening. So it is a very people oriented process, very, um, complimentary to the data driven aspects that we're hearing about today as well. And what happens through that system as well is kind of this annual peer to peer uh knowledge exchange through judges visiting sites, sites receiving the feedback, and this circulating on an annual basis, uh, especially between different municipalities, different city councils, they might be discovering, example, policies or best practice from each other through the judging process. And now that's also happening abroad, so we're sharing some of our knowledge from the UK sector with uh these other countries abroad and likewise getting really good ideas from UK judges visiting abroad and bringing those back to the UK and implementing them. So it, it has this constant cycle and that's another reason why it's really important, it's an annual process. Exchanging best practice um and learning from each other. And in the past couple of years we've we've also tried to support the sector by bringing that all together into our website and we've got two platforms that do that. The Parks of Green Spaces Resources hub where we have uh management plans from from parks that have won the award. We have policies and procedures, strategies from all across the UK and the world, free to access, free, free for anyone, you don't even need to log in to access that. And then more recently, we were approached by the University of Leeds and the University of Sheffield to do a similar thing but from. The academic world, so bringing academic research down and trying to communicate with practitioners on the ground to try and create this synergy between what's being studied in universities and what's being delivered at ground level. And that's starting to grow, um, over the past year or so with new uh new research papers coming on board and people registering on the directory. Both of those are completely free platforms, and that's really the ethos of the Green Flag Award. Um, you know, just to finish, the main focus of the Green Flag Award program is to recognize the people behind the places, um, and to give them the credit they deserve for looking after parks and green spaces, because these are the people that provide all of those benefits that we see because back to the start, if parks are not well managed and well maintained, they don't deliver those benefits. So it's a really positive program to get involved with, um, and I just want to finish by recognizing all the hard work of the Parks and greenspace sector, um, through the Green Flag Award program. So thank you very much.