Liverpool parks to be protected from development

Liverpool City Council wants to protect 100 green spaces, including Stanley Park

All of Liverpool's parks are to be protected from development, the city council has pledged.

It has set out plans for a "unique partnership" with the charity Fields in Trust to protect 100 green spaces from being sold or built on.

By the end of 2023 all of the city's parks - equating to more than 1,000 hectares of land - will be safeguarded.

The council said its aim was that everyone would live within a 10 minute walk of a park or green space.

The authority will retain ownership of the green spaces and will continue to be responsible for the maintenance of all the parks.

Jo Barnett, chair of trustees at Fields in Trust, said the Covid-19 pandemic had made people realise "just how valuable parks and green spaces are to our health and wellbeing".

"These are valuable places, places where we can all move, breathe, run and play," she said.

"We need to champion and support these precious spaces by protecting them for future generations to enjoy. Because once lost, they are lost forever."

Chrisie Byrne, the chair of the Liverpool Parks Friends Forum, said: "For the communities around our parks in the city it'll be a huge sigh of relief because they will know that their park will be there for not just them, but their children and grandchildren.

"Parks have played a huge role in people's lives for generations before us and never more so than during this pandemic, so now we can carry on enjoying them knowing they are safe."

The city's acting mayor, councillor Wendy Simon, is set to make the plans official at a meeting on Friday.

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