Why we must legislate for access to nature

POLITICS HOME - 16 SEPTEMBER

The House Opinion Article - Baroness Willis, Chair of Peers for the Planet

Access to green and blue spaces – our parks, community gardens, rivers, ponds, and wetlands – is not a luxury. It is as essential to our health and wellbeing as clean water and fresh air. Yet time and again, the chance to design these spaces into our towns and cities is being squandered.

That is why I recently tabled two amendments to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill in the House of Lords. Both are designed to lock into law a simple but powerful principle: that access to green and blue space must be built into spatial development strategies and the work of development corporations. 

Put plainly, when we construct the 1.5 million homes the government has promised, people should not be forced to live in concrete landscapes with no easy access to nature. These spaces must be designed in from the very start, not left as an afterthought.

The UK has already pledged to deliver this vision. At COP15 in 2022, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework set a target: every citizen should live within 15 minutes’ walk of green or blue space, because of the immense health benefits it provides. The government echoed this ambition in its 2023 Environmental Improvement Plan.

But the reality is sobering. The policy framework we currently rely on – the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) – is guidance, not law. Guidance is open to interpretation, easily ignored, and vulnerable to the whims of future governments. Meanwhile, green space is vanishing before our eyes.

Between 2001 and 2018, urban England lost around 120,000 hectares of green space – an area equivalent to the size of four cities like Manchester. In some places, losses have been as high as 34 per cent. Most of this was not remote land on the fringes of towns, but local patches where people walked their dogs, tended allotments, or simply enjoyed a breath of fresh air. Guidance alone is not stopping this erosion.

Some might question why it matters whether green space is no more than 15 minutes away. The answer is simple: the science is clear. A growing body of evidence shows a direct link between proximity to nature and human health.

Take one example. A 2023 study in The Lancet Planetary Health examined the medical records of 2.3 million adults in Wales spanning over a decade. Researchers calculated how far people lived from green or blue space and compared this with mental health outcomes. Their conclusion was stark: the further you live from nature, the higher your risk of common mental health disorders. For every extra 360 metres between home and green or blue space, rates of depression and anxiety increased. And it was people on the lowest incomes who benefited the most when nature was close by.

This is why access to green space is not just a public good – it is an equity issue. Wealthier communities already tend to live closer to urban green spaces. If we are serious about levelling up, then housing for those on lower incomes must come with guaranteed access to nearby nature. Otherwise, we risk locking in health inequality for generations to come.

We should also stop treating green and blue spaces as “nice to have” extras. They are critical infrastructure. They cool our cities during heatwaves, soak up floodwaters, clean the air we breathe, and provide vital habitats for wildlife. 

As climate change accelerates, these spaces will be as important as roads, hospitals, and energy systems in keeping our communities safe and resilient.

This is why we need statutory requirements, not vague guidance. Writing access to green and blue space into law would ensure that the new towns and housing developments we build today are fit for tomorrow – serving people, climate, and nature alike.

The government has made strong commitments. My amendments, alongside others in this bill, simply ask that those commitments be honoured. Without stronger measures, we risk creating soulless housing estates cut off from the natural world, while watching our promises to future generations dissolve into empty words.

If we want healthy, equitable, and resilient communities, then access to green and blue space cannot be optional. It must be a legal guarantee.

Baroness Willis is a crossbench peer, Chair of Peers for the Planet and Professor of Biodiversity at the University of Oxford

This article was published by Politics Home on the 16th September 2025