WWL3.1
Access to Green Space
Where we live
Neighbourhood
Access to Green Space
Public Health England (PHE) define greenspace as any area of vegetated land, urban or rural. These spaces, collectively known as green infrastructure, offer numerous benefits for health, wellbeing, and the environment. PHE emphasizes that greenspaces are essential assets for local communities, aiding in health improvement, reducing healthcare costs, addressing social inequalities, fostering social cohesion, and combating climate change.
Research indicates that living in greener environments promotes better physical health, aids in recovery from illness, and enhances mental wellbeing. Access to greenspaces correlates with positive physiological outcomes and reduced levels of depression, anxiety, and fatigue. Additionally, greenspaces contribute to community cohesion, decrease loneliness, and mitigate the adverse effects of pollution, noise, heat, and flooding.
Moreover, disadvantaged communities tend to experience greater health benefits from greenspaces, which can help alleviate socioeconomic-related health disparities. Therefore, investing in greenspaces and creating greener urban environments can serve as a tool for building a fairer society.
The PHE greenspace review highlights recent valuations indicating significant economic and health benefits associated with access to greenspaces:
- Improved physical activity in greenspaces could potentially save £2.1 billion annually in health costs across England.
- In Birmingham, parks and greenspaces contribute nearly £600 million annually to society, with £192 million attributed to health benefits.
- Sheffield demonstrates a remarkable return on investment, with every £1 spent on park maintenance yielding £34 in health cost savings, primarily benefiting local residents.
- Properties within 100 meters of public greenspaces in England and Wales are, on average, £2,500 more expensive than those located over 500 meters away, indicating a 1.1% premium in 2016, suggesting that proximity to greenspaces is valued by the public.
Key Value
A monetised social value of £3,600
This is the value to 1 person for 1 year who strongly agrees ‘local green spaces are within easy walking distance’. It is calculated using the base value of £13,000 as the monetised value of a 1 WELLBY change in wellbeing.
1 WELLBY is an increase in life satisfaction by 1 point on a scale of 0 to 10.
This outcome is associated with 2 UN SDGs and 3 UK Central Government Social Value Model Policy outcomes
Where does this headline value come from?
There are existing values relating to access to greenspace, and there are validated (tried and tested) ways to most accurately ask about these.
The values are guided by government policy (The Green Book) and sophisticated research into the relationship between access to greenspace and wellbeing (measured by life satisfaction.) The Green Book recommends that life satisfaction is expressed as £ monetised wellbeing, using the value of £13,000 for 1 WELLBY, over one year (see section on life satisfaction.)
They all come from The WELLBY Value Guide by State of Life and use data from the Monitor of Engagement with the Natural Environment Survey (MENE). The coefficients indicate the difference in life satisfaction associated with being in each category. Note that the MENE data does not have a longitudinal component and they therefore must rely on cross-sectional regressions to produce the wellbeing coefficients. This implies that the corresponding results are less robust and more likely to be upward biased; They have applied a downward adjustment of 50% in an attempt to counteract this bias.
Research using national datasets can estimate the isolated impact of a change in access to green space on life satisfaction, after accounting for important controls such as age, health, socio-economics and other demographics. This research has been done by State of Life (The WELLBY Value Guide), which found that even after accounting for all these other factors, compared to someone who ‘neither agrees nor disagrees’, someone who ‘strongly agrees’ ‘local greenspaces are within easy walking distance’ is associated with an increase in life satisfaction by 0.46703. Therefore this change in access to greenspace is worth 0.46703 WELLBYs, or 0.46703*£13,000/2 = £3,036 (rounded to £3,000).
Adjusted for inflation to 2023 is £3,563. Our approach to inflation adjustments is explained on our Methodology page HERE
An overall rounded value of £3,600.
How to measure Access to Greenspace
If you’re just starting out, start with Bronze first. The result of a Bronze measurement is just an estimate, but requires the least effort; whereas Silver and Gold give more accurate results but require more effort.
Each level has an effort to accuracy indicator, choose the one that’s right for you.
Bronze
Effort
Accuracy
Monetised value:
Monetised social value: Multiply the proportion of your participants you expect to gain easy access to greenspace by £3,600
APPLYING THE WELLBY VALUE: Consider the proportion of your participants you expect to gain easy access to greenspace. Multiply this by £3,600 to obtain a value per person.
If you can’t ask people directly about their access to greenspace, because you’re unable to survey them, or this is a plan for a future project, then you can use this value as a proxy for increased access to greenspace. It’s an estimate of the impact of an intervention that’s effective at changing someone from being neutral to strongly agreeing that they have access to greenspace.
Here’s an example
You plan a programme which will transform a disused building site into a park. You anticipate that 200 local residents live within 2 minutes walking distance of the site (2 minutes is what you consider easy walking distance). You’re aware that not everyone will strongly agree that it is easily accessible, so you anticipate some (75%, or 150 out of 200) would strongly agree with this. Therefore you estimate 0.75*£3,600 = £2,700 value person. Applied to the 200 local residence, £2,700*200 = £540,000 monetised social value.
At the bronze level (where you are assuming what the impact might be) your value is likely to overestimate the value of your intervention. We’ve only introduced the value of shifting from neutral to strongly agree. Realistically this could be a big shift for a person. Shifting between other categories has different values.
Silver
Effort
Accuracy
Monetised value:
Monetised social value: Consider what shifts you might observe in people’s attitudes towards the new park. Therefore you can calculate an estimate of the overall shift, by applying the appropriate WELLBY values.
To get a more accurate representation of your project, think realistically about how residents might view the new park, and how their answers to this question might change.
APPLYING THE WELLBY VALUE: Consider what attitude your local residence might realistically be starting with. Then consider what attitudes they might realistically shift to. Calculate the difference, which will give you a net change in each category. Multiply these net changes by the corresponding WELLBY values. These can be added up to obtain a total value per person. You can then apply this figure per person to the total number of people it applies to.
Here’s an example
Example: You plan a programme which will transform a disused building site into a park. You estimate 200 residents live within a 5 minute walk (5 minutes is what you consider an easy walk). Assuming that there is not another park within easy walking distance, you estimate 35% of residents agree the new park is easily accessible and 20% of residents strongly agree that the new park is easily accessible. The rest will be neutral or disagree.
| Intervention Group (200 people) | Value (to be applied per person) | Total Value | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither agree or disagree / agree / strongly disagree | 200*45%= 90 | £0 | £0 |
| Agree | 200*35%= 70 | £2,400 | £2,400*70=£168,000 |
| Strongly Agree | 200*20% = 40 | £3,600 | £3,600*40=£144,000 |
Total value (of programme): £312,000
Total value (per person): £1,560
Gold
Effort
Accuracy
Monetised value:
Monetised social value: Measure actual amounts of difference that access to greenspace makes to people’s lives
At Gold level you are looking to build on your silver estimations by engaging with the person or people affected.
Therefore, at the Gold level, you should survey users about their actual levels of wellbeing rather than using the proxy value.
There are many options for surveying people on their wellbeing.
A good starting point for questions to ask directly through primary research with your stakeholders is the Maximise Your Impact Guide. This guide covers 10 overall impact questions. For Gold level practice you would be looking to understand the question ‘what changes do people experience?’ and ‘how much of each change happened’. Questions you might want to include in your survey to uncover the outcomes they experience could include:
- What changed for you (or happened to you) as a result of our activity or programme?
- Were there any other changes?
- Did these changes lead on to anything else?
- Were the changes all positive?
- Were any of them unexpected?
- What did you want to happen?
- How did your situation/ circumstances affect your experience?
A starting point for questions related to wellbeing is to look at the What Works Centre for Wellbeing website: https://whatworkswellbeing.org/about-wellbeing/how-to-measure-wellbeing/ .
As you start to measure wellbeing directly from the people affected, one set of questions it is important to consider is the ONS4 – the national measures for subjective wellbeing in the UK which asks the following 4 questions on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is ‘not at all’ and 10 is ‘completely’:
- Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
- Overall, to what extent do you feel that the things that you do in your life are worthwhile?
- Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?
- On a scale where 0 is ‘not at all anxious’ and 10 is ‘completely anxious’, how anxious did you feel yesterday overall?
For measuring the change related to increased access to greenspace directly with your stakeholders at Gold level, you will need to ask the validated question regarding access to greenspace as used in in the Monitor of Engagement with the Natural Environment survey. To apply these WELLBY values you should use the same question, and ask it in the same way. The question should be asked in exactly this way:
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement:
“Local greenspaces are within easy walking distance.” [strongly agree, agree, neither agree or disagree, disagree or strongly disagree]
Support in developing your Gold survey approach is available through the Measure Up partners, so please do reach out to Impact, State of Life or PRD.
Gold+
Effort
Accuracy
Monetised value:
At the Gold+ level, you are building on your Gold value calculation by assessing the value against the counterfactual, or ‘what would have happened anyway’.
To do this you should identify a control group suitable to assess in line with your intervention, in order to more accurately attribute any changes to your intervention. For example for access to greenspace, you could assess a group of people who don’t have easy access to greenspace as a control group and a group of people who have easy access to new greenspace.
You could also consider any other discount or causality elements linked to your activity, such as displacement, contribution, and duration and drop off.
Support in developing your Gold+ counterfactual, causality and discount approach is available through the Measure Up partners, so please do reach out to Impact, State of Life or PRD.
| Value Type: | Master outcome |
What's this?
This is the type of value. Some values are outcomes, which means many different interventions might lead to them, others are specific interventions that have a set value. |
|---|---|---|
| UN SDG Categories: |
|
What's this?
The UN Sustainable Development Goals are global goals adopted in 2015 for all signed up nations to achieve for us to have a sustainable global future by 2030. There are 17 Goals that address the global challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice. The Goals are all interconnected, and in order to leave no one behind, it is important that we achieve them all by 2030. |
| PN06/20 Categories: |
|
What's this?
PPN 06/20 Taking account of social value in the award of central government contracts introduced the Central Government Social Value Model in 2020 which all Central Government contracting authorities must use in their in scope procurements. It consists of 5 themes, 8 policy outcomes, and 24 Model Award Criteria which outline key priority areas to achieve more social value. |
Evidence
Measure Up focuses on empowering you to numerically measure the impact you’re having. We recommend that numeric reports are backed up with stories and other types of evidence to help illustrate, in human terms, the impact that’s being made on individuals.
We recommend seeing consent from one or more participants in your intervention to collect and tell their story. This should include a little background on the participant, a summing up of life before the intervention, the human impact of the intervention, and the longer term (if known) impact on the person’s life outside of, and after, the intervention.
Providing photographs, audio recordings, video interviews or even artefacts from the intervention (for example, writing, paintings, music, etc from creative interventions) can add more colour, and convey the emotional impact of interventions more directly.
In some cases it’s appropriate to anonymise or abbreviate the personal information of case study participants. No story should be published or shared without the recorded consent of the individual(s) it concerns. Individuals continue to own the rights to their stories and if they request you stop sharing the story or making it available online you should do so promptly and without need for justification.
Feedback
Measure Up is an open, collaborative and transparent. If you have any suggestions or feedback on our pragmatic, recommended approach to measuring Life Satisfaction please get in touch so we can share and discuss this at our next Advisory Group meeting.
More help
We want to empower anyone to perform and improve their impact measurement – without needing a degree in economics.
If you need any more help, or just someone to do the legwork for you we can help signpost you to software, training and consultancy to help you get to grips with the impact you’re having.
