Natural England - Standards for accessible natural greenspace - ANGSt

Standards for accessible natural greenspace - ANGSt

Natural England's Accessible Natural Greenspace Standard (ANGSt) provides a set of benchmarks for ensuring access to places near to where people live.

These standards recommend that people living in towns and cities should have:

  • an accessible natural greenspace of at least 2 hectares in size, no more than 300 metres (5 minutes walk) from home

  • at least one accessible 20 hectare site within two kilometres of home

  • one accessible 100 hectare site within five kilometres of home

  • one accessible 500 hectare site within ten kilometres of home

  • one hectare of statutory Local Nature Reserves per thousand population.

In some areas, this will be hard to achieve in the short term, but it should be a long-term aim for all local authorities, within their Greenspace Strategies.  Natural England has worked with its partners to develop new guidance on how to use and apply ANGSt along with the visitor services and Green Flag Award quality standards for natural green spaces.  We want 'Nature Nearby' - Accessible Natural Greenspace Guidanceexternal link to be used to plan and deliver more sustainable healthy neighbourhoods, more resilient to the impacts of climate change.  We want them to offer inspiring experiences of the natural environment as part of people's daily lives.