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Skills Don't Grow On Trees
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The professionals who plan, manage and maintain our parks, are a dying breed ? literally. New research has found that local authority parks departments ? in common with a number of other council roles - are facing a staffing crisis, as many skilled parks workers approach retirement. With fewer and fewer younger people coming into the relevant local authorities and councils in recent years there is a proportionate lack of new staff being trained to replace those leaving.
The report, Parks Need People Need Parks shows that parks departments are struggling in the face of a serious skills shortage, which is affecting staff from senior management right through to operational levels.
The report shows that the parks workforce is an ageing one, with 68% over 40 and 92% over 30 years old. More significantly, career prospects are rated as poor, very poor or non-existent by over half of those surveyed. Around 60% have been in the same post for more than a decade. Staff composition is unrepresentative of the population; with virtually no ethnic diversity, and the proportion of women in the sector is only around 10%.
Crisis
In the report, the research partners call on the government to recognise the urgency of the crisis in green space skills in developing the recommendations of the Egan Review. The Egan Review: Skills for Sustainable Communities, published by the government in April, sets out the skills needed to deliver decent homes and a good quality local environment across the country.
Speaking on behalf of the research partners, Julia Thrift, Director of CABE Space said: ?We were very pleased to see Egan recognise that good parks are essential to raise the quality of life in our towns and cities. Parks and green spaces are as vital to our cities as roads and sewers, breathing life into communities, bringing beauty, character, nature, and wildlife. However, this research shows that parks are facing a real skills crisis over the next 5-10 years.
 ?Soon there may be no one left who knows how to create and care for the parks that are essential to make our town and cities better places to live and work. The sponsors of this report call on the Government to place green space skills at the heart of the national skills strategy for sustainable communities, and are jointly offering their full assistance to Government to ensure that priority is given to attracting people to plan, manage and maintain our green spaces.?
The research finds that skill levels are low at all levels in the sector. In response to the crisis, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), supported by a wide range of partners will be creating a new senior post dedicated to developing a national skills strategy for green space. CABE Skills, the specialist skills and training unit within CABE, will help to deliver the Strategy. As the employer-led body representing the interests of the amenity sector on skills issues, Sector Skills Council, Lantra is keen that the research findings form part of a joint effort to influence government thinking on tackling the skills deficits facing the sector, following the publication of the Egan report.
Activities
Julia Thrift said: ?The range of activities undertaken by the people we surveyed, from working with people, to horticulture and ecology, highlights the diversity and attractiveness of working in the sector, yet a career in parks is not often seen as an attractive option. This report?s research partners urge all the professions and workers who create and maintain our parks to work together to tackle this skills shortage. CABE Space?s national skills strategy will set out a framework, but everyone working in the sector - from park rangers to landscape architects, and from wardens to horticulturalists - needs to work with their professional bodies, with the sector skills council, and with the universities and colleges to ensure that the park workers of the future can deliver the green places we need for the twenty first century.?
The research seems to indicate that short-term savings achieved by successive restructurings and the use of Compulsory Competitive Tendering have led to long-term loss of skills and status for local authority parks departments, even among the ?Beacon Councils? - those local authorities recognised for achieving exemplary green space services.
The report has been commissioned by a group of environmental and parks agencies, including:
CABE Space ? the part of CABE which works for the benefit of open spaces, parks, children?s play areas and common ground
Lantra - the Sector Skills Council for the environmental and land-based sector
The Countryside Agency
English Heritage
English Nature
Sport England
Beacon Councils
The research mapped the occupations, skills and careers of those responsible for delivering parks management and maintenance in six of the seven Beacon Councils, along with those of their contractors where applicable. It examined the profile of people working in the sector: their terms, conditions and prospects, their skills and experience, their training needs and opportunities, their aspirations and frustrations, and identified ?success factors? and weaknesses in practice within Beacon Councils.
There will be a forthcoming set of recommendations highlighting the examples and transferable lessons of good practice from these councils.
Feedback received through the partners? direct links with employers had pointed towards recruitment and skills shortage difficulties, but this is the first time that a major piece of research has corroborated previously anecdotal evidence.
Follow this link to download the complete report: Parks Need People Need Parks: The Skills Shortage In Parks
CABE is an Executive Non-Departmental Public Body. It is funded by both the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM).
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