Published as ‘Equal by Design’ in ‘Landscape’ the Journal of the Landscape Institute, Summer 2018
In 2017, I was part of a team led by Tyrens UK to develop masterplans for six parks on behalf of Croydon Council. The Council’s ambition for the project was that the six parks should form a case study for its parks more widely. Parks, Croydon said, should be central to neighbourhood wellbeing in the context of a rapidly growing population. At the same time, the project needed to identify new ways to generate funds and justify spending to ensure a sustainable future for the parks.
Carrying out an Equalities Impact Assessment was used to evaluate how decisions would impact equalities at every stage of the project – from baseline to masterplan. This meant that we were always alive to the potential conflicts between pay-for-use facilities, revenue generation and cost reduction, and the overall goal of enhancing health and wellbeing benefits for Croydon’s diverse community.
The Equality Act 2010 requires that when a new public policy or strategy is proposed, the potential impacts with regard to protected characteristics (established by the Act) are assessed. The impact assessment must inform the policy or strategy, so everyone benefits equally. For our Equalities Impact Assessment, we started by identifying findings from research on park use that was associated with each characteristic or combination of characteristics. These are the key issues we identified:
Age: Equality means ensuring that everyone can use parks and public spaces confidently, and that appropriate activity is provided across the spectrum of ages, including for teens or older people, who were not always considered, and whose needs could conflict. Ensuring views were heard from a representative spread of ages was important. Safety is a key concern for all vulnerable groups. Active overlooked, accessible and clustered facilities help provide this.
Disability: Reducing accessibility barriers with routes suitable for people with mobility or visual impairments, accessible play facilities, and accessible toilets are a starting point. Health and wellbeing can be enhanced across a range of long-term illness and impairments by providing varied opportunities for sociability, for quiet, and for activities like gardening, as well as physical exercise.
Gender reassignment, and sexual orientation: Research for people with either of these protected characteristics relates mainly to their exclusion from park space through fear and harassment. Designs to promote confidence and safety here are key.
Pregnancy and maternity: Again - perceived safety, but also this group needs buggy accessible paths, toilets and baby-changing facilities.
Race: Proportionately more people of black and minority ethnicities (BME) are of low income in the UK, so ensuring income generation doesn’t exclude low-income users could be an equalities issue under the Act. People of BME are generally under-represented as park users, and as managers, designers, and friends of parks. Ensuring good participation from people of all ethnicities in the park catchments was crucial, as a dominant group preference might exclude a less-vocal section of the community.
Religion or belief: Issues associated with religion include ensuring some dog control or dog-free space, provision of changing facilities, and identifying more private outdoor spaces that can be booked for single-sex sessions.
Sex: Men’s access to park space can be limited by social pressure, if the primary function is perceived to be as a space for children. Equitable sport provision, suitable changing space and opportunities for group bookings, including single-sex bookings, were all assessed. Women tend to be more fearful in park space than men. Again, ensuring spaces are designed to promote confidence and safety are important to equitable access.
We talked to Croydon residents and stakeholders about the facilities and future funding options for all six parks. We conducted 900 face-to-face discussions in and around the parks, which achieved close to representative sampling based on census data at ward level, supplemented by the views of almost 2,000 online participants.
The engagement data provided direction to the team for our final masterplans; evidence in support of inclusive facilities including accessible surfaced paths and dog controls, even in country parks; and guided Croydon Council as to the likely reaction to different sustainable financing strategies. The actual impacts on park use can’t be measured until implementation, but the Equalities Impact Assessment provides a benchmark and we’ll be watching with interest.
Dr Bridget Snaith CMLI is a partner at Shape and senior lecturer in landscape architecture at the University of East London.