The Green Flag Award is an international accreditation given to publicly accessible parks and open spaces, managed under licence from the

Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), formerly the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), is a department of His Majesty's Government responsible for housing, communities, local government i ...

, a UK Government department, by

Keep Britain Tidy Keep Britain Tidy is a UK-based independent environmental charity. The organisation campaigns to reduce litter, improve local places and prevent waste. It has offices in Wigan and London. History Keep Britain Tidy was originally set up by a conf ...

, who also administers the scheme in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

History

The Green Flag Award was introduced in 1996, and first awarded in 1997, by the

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), formerly the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), is a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, department of Government of the United King ...

(MHCLG) with the intention of establishing agreed standards of good management, to help to justify and evaluate funding and to raise park attendance. The scheme was managed by Civic Trust, on MHCLG's behalf, until they lost the contract and the charity went bust in 2009. The scheme has been managed by Keep Britain Tidy since 2012, with sister organisations

Keep Scotland Beautiful Keep Scotland Beautiful is an environmental charity based in Scotland, which aims “to make Scotland a cleaner, greener and more sustainable place to live, work and visit.” The organisation campaigns and educates on a range of environmental iss ...

Keep Wales Tidy Keep Wales Tidy is a Welsh national voluntary environmental charity which works towards achieving "a clean, safe and tidy Wales". It works in partnership with Local Authorities, schools and community groups, and organisations such as Waste Awarene ...

and

TIDY Northern Ireland Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful (KNIB), known until 2014 as TIDY Northern Ireland, is a non-profit environmental organisation based in Northern Ireland. In addition to running the "Keep Northern Ireland Tidy" campaign, it supports or provides gran ...

delivering the scheme across the UK, and various other bodies delivering worldwide.

Purpose and description

The scheme's aim is to promote standards of good management and best-practice amongst the green space sector. It is described by its issuers, Keep Britain Tidy, as an "internationally recognised award that is a benchmark for well-managed green space". As of October 2021, 2227 parks and open spaces held a Green Flag Award. While

public park An urban park or metropolitan park, also known as a municipal park (North America) or a public park, public open space, or municipal gardens ( UK), is a park in cities and other incorporated places that offer recreation and green space to re ...

s make up most of the awardees, the Green Flag Award is also issued to sites with different uses, such as

Loughborough University Loughborough University (abbreviated as ''Lough'' or ''Lboro'' for post-nominals) is a public research university in the market town of Loughborough, Leicestershire, England. It has been a university since 1966, but it dates back to 1909, when L ...

and

Bluewater Shopping Centre Bluewater Shopping Centre (commonly referred to as Bluewater) is an out-of-town shopping centre in Stone (postally Greenhithe), Kent, England, outside the M25 motorway, east south east of London's centre. Opened on 16 March 1999 in a former chal ...

, for the management of their grounds.

Governance

The Green Flag Award is managed under licence from the

, a UK Government department, by

, who also administers the scheme in

and several other countries, including Australia and the United States.

Accreditation

The owners of spaces that wish to hold the accreditation, pay a fee to be assessed by volunteer judges on an annual basis with a process involving

secret shopper Mystery shopping (related terms: mystery shopper, mystery consumer, mystery research, secret shopper and secret shopping and auditor) is a method used by marketing research companies and organizations that wish to measure quality of sales and s ...

s and inspection of both the park and the owner's management plans. The aspects that spaces are judged on are: A failure to meet the judges' standards can result in the accreditation being withdrawn; one example of this is North London's

Finsbury Park Finsbury Park is a public park in the London neighbourhood of Harringay. It is in the area formerly covered by the historic parish of Hornsey, succeeded by the Municipal Borough of Hornsey. It was one of the first of the great London parks ...

which lost its Green Flag in 2018.

References

External links