Walk & Talk with Helen Philips
As the CEO of Natural England — the Government’s chief advisory body on the natural environment — Helen Philips has a huge influence on our favourite green spaces to go walking. In this extended interview, she talks to walk editor Dominic Bates about creating England’s new coastal footpath, tackling climate change and expanding walking-for-health schemes…
Are you a regular walker yourself?
Not as much as I’d like or used to be, but I do enjoy it on so many levels. You feel better for it in your body and your soul. I think walking is probably the entry point for opening up the natural environment to people. You don’t need fancy kit and you don’t have to be in unfamiliar surroundings – it’s something you can get on with and enjoy.
How long have you been CEO of Natural England (NE), and what led you to take the job?
For 3½ years – I was the midwife for the merger of the Countryside Agency, English Nature and the Rural Development Service into NE in October 2006. I previously worked with the Environment Agency in Wales and wanted to help with a moment in history that was going to define the future of nature conservation and access to the countryside. The 1949 Act created Natural Nature Reserves for botanists to go and study things on, and created other places for people to go and enjoy the landscape and experience the natural environment – and never the twain shall meet. It was the NERC (Natural Environment and Rural Communities) Act in 2006, which created Natural England and brought these two things back together again.
What have been NE’s biggest successes during your stewardship?
There are many! Some of the biggest ones include: improving Sites of Special Scientific Interest – 89% are now in favourable or recovering condition; getting 75% of our priority wildlife species back on track for recovery, up from 50% when NE started; launching the Cotswold National Trail; the designation of the South Downs National Park; and, of course, the Marine Act with its English coastal path. We’ve delivered all that despite changing from three organisations into one. We’ve reduced our staff by 12%, our costs by 15% in real term, closed offices, and taken our carbon footprint down by 25% (we’re on track to be at 50% by the end of 2010).
Many people would still perceive NE solely concerned with the countryside – how does the urban environment fit your remit?
We were very heavily branded as a rural body because of all the work we do with farmers and land managers through the delivery of agri-environment schemes, which is a really important part of our work. But we forget the connection between the countryside and the 80% of people who live in urban environments, and much the work we do in rural areas has benefits for urban dwellers. I’m passionate about making that connection. What we do has direct, long-term benefits for people living in urban areas, whether it’s increasing biodiversity, managing floodwater retention or carbon sequestration to minimise climate change. We also work directly in urban areas, like our green infrastructure strategy on accessible green spaces. We say that people should have at least two hectares of quality green space within 500 metres of where they live. There’s lots of research that shows people who live more than a mile from a park or a green space are considerably less active and are a quarter more likely to be overweight or obese. From a rambler’s perspective, it’s part of a journey from couch to countryside. You don’t wake up one morning and think you want to take a bus to a national park; you get that enjoyment somewhere local which then encourages you to go further afield.
So how are you delivering those strategies?
Over the last couple of years, we’ve managed to secure the requirement for green space strategies in all the country’s urban growth areas and we’ve got 70 projects happening on the ground. We’re leading ten of them and supporting another 60 with developers, local authorities and others. Hopefully it will be hugely catalytic in producing really good green infrastructure in the future.
What makes a good urban green space?
The main thing is the involvement of the local community. You can’t thrust ideas upon people about what green they should have – the local community should have ownership of the space, so they care for it and are interested in maintaining and enjoying it. I recently paid a visit to the Peabody Estate in Westminster just behind Victoria Street – a very ancient block of flats. We had been there helping with some greening of those areas and we walked past this tiny little patch of grass. “That’s nice,” I said to the local lady who corrals the residents’ association, “but it looks a bit plain. A bit of wild flower seed mix would look lovely”. “Oh no,” she replied, “that’s the last thing we would want. You forget that mothers have nowhere to sit their babies and their children here on a hot day and the grass is just perfect”. The community knows what they want from their green spaces.
Do you see the natural environment as a useful part of tackling more urban issues of obesity, health and social inclusion?
We’re pretty passionate about it. We have the Walking for Health Initiative (WHI) – the largest of its kind in Europe – with 37,000 trained walk leaders [some Ramblers’ volunteers] and 32,000 people participating every week. We’ve worked hard on the quality of underpinning evidence linking walking and health and got NICE (National Institute of Clinical Excellence) to add walking to the list of GPs’ prescribable activities as a good way of tackling physical and mental health problems. Now the Department of Health has given us £4million to increase the number of WHI participants to over 130,000 a week over the next three years, which is really exciting. For every pound they invest in WHI, they’ll save £7.18 in NHS costs – a total of £81 million over three years.
Some people have criticized diversity projects, such as the CNP’s Mosaic scheme, as patronising to ethnic minorities. How do you respond to that?
I think it’s all about how you do it. People are able to make their own choices, but what’s inexcusable is not giving people that choice. We shouldn’t assume everybody has the opportunity to visit the countryside, so it’s hugely important we help provide people with those opportunities and give them the choice.
The Defra shadow secretary Nick Herbert gave NE a bashing at the Tory Party conference, criticising WHI and saying a £32k Health Walks Delivery Officer was a waste of money. What’s your response to that?
Nick Herbert had some very innovative ideas about upstream investment, and wanted to reducing prison costs by spending money on reducing crime and reoffending. WHI is a similar idea, in that making an upstream investment to improve the quality of people’s lives saves the public purse a shedload of money downstream, dealing with the symptoms of lack of exercise and ill-health. I guess we need to get even better at demonstrating those benefits to our critics.
Are you worried that a Tory government next year might abolish NE?
We think we’ve got a pretty sound track record for effectiveness and efficiency, and I hope that whoever is in power next year will take that into account before taking any decisions about what is the best way forward.
There’s a great deal of excitement about the Marine & Coastal Access Bill at the Ramblers: why do you think the coastal access provisions and an English coastal path will be so beneficial?
The financial benefits of the path are an important part of the path, but so is the principle. I was born in Bray, Co Wicklow, Ireland, and you could spit on the sea from my house. There’s something about the affinity of island nations with the coast and with the sea, and they should be freely available for everyone to enjoy. The sheer continuity of the coastal path and its ease to navigate is really a glorious thing for the nation. I want to create a good experience along the path though too, so it’s not just a little track between a clifftop and a barbed wire fence. We’re bringing lots of different environmental schemes together to enhance the immediate inland landscape and improve people’s experience of the route. Ultimately, I think a National Nature Reserve around the entire perimeter of the English coast would be a glorious thing.
Is the budget and timescale – £50million over a decade – realistic to roll out the footpath?
That’s our best estimate and the approach we’re taking explains its relative modesty. We’ll focus on key bits of the route, working in a very consensual way with all the interested parties – local access forums, landowners or local authorities – and using local knowledge to get the best way through. So it doesn’t involve the expensive process of mapping we used for open access and will be a lot quicker, avoiding lengthy and costly appeal processes.
The government has said you have to try to agree permissive access over parkland with private landowners in the next 5 years before looking at legal options. Do you think this will work?
We sincerely hope so. We’ve no desire to go through inappropriate areas underneath peoples’ kitchen windows, but often in private parkland you’re talking about areas that are miles from the nearest dwelling. We’ll try to build up trust about a sensible alignment for the route and hope those landowners will come willingly into a voluntarily agreement. But I think it’s important we have the Minister’s assurances that that if it doesn’t work within five years, an order could be invoked to unblock the route if necessary.
Would you like to work more closely with the Ramblers on any future NE schemes?
I’d really love it if we could. Not just on WHI, but also with another project called One Million Children Outdoors over the next three years. Your Fresh Air, Firm Ground five-year plan is really important with its walking initiatives to target hard-to-reach groups and its renewed emphasis on partnership. I think that’s a very natural extension of what we’re doing with WHI and we’d love to get involved with that.
The Ramblers was delighted with the South Downs National Park designation this year, does England need any more NPs?
I think future designations – whether NPs, SSSIs or NNRs – are going to be very important to protect iconic landscapes and create safe-havens for wildlife. But they’ll be more about creating corridors between beauty spots, providing a continuity of space for plants and animals. There’ll also be based on a much wider set of criteria for which we might want to consider them.
Does NE want to build on green belts?
Not at all. But the proportion of the country designated as green belt is quite high and is often green only in name. In a report on the issue we’re releasing soon, we want to identify the less beautiful green belt areas and look at options to improve it for the recreational use of nearby residents.
With the twin challenges of a burgeoning population and climate change, is environmental conservation in England in a critical state?
We published a report on the state of the natural environment two years ago that found it in a critical state. Salt marsh degradation, declining bird populations, afforestation – on virtually every aspect of there is a decline in quality. But before we get too miserable, it also showed that in areas where we are taking concerted action, there is a halt in decline and improvement. So for me the message is simpe: you’ve got to invest in the natural environment to protect or enhance it. And studies show this makes economic sense too: for example, investing in soft sea defences, like wetland creation, has a huge impact on the cost of flood risk management in this country.
What about the value of the natural environment for carbon-trading?
Of course climate change is important but we mustn’t let it become the only show in town because we’re locked in now to 50 years of inevitable climate change, irrespective of what decisions are taken in Copenhagen in December. We’re into a serious period of adaptation and the most important contributing factor is the natural environment. So NE’s work will continue around the importance of high quality wildlife sites, protecting species, getting more and more agricultural land into environmental stewardship, and designating England’s new Marine Conservation Zones. It’s also the international year of biodiversity next year. We’re going to find out, like all our European neighbours, that we’ve failed to achieve our commitment to halt biodiversity loss by 2010. Where do we go from here? Are we going to continue to have stretching aspirational targets? I for one would hugely support such measures because, while we’re not there, it has made a difference.
Has the current Labour government been responsive to your advice as an advisory body on the environment?
We’ve had a very excellent relationship with the Government. We have, in Hillary Benn, an extraordinary committed passionate advocate for the natural environment, who publicly welcomes our advice, even if it’s uncomfortable, and supports our independence.
Could they have done more?
We’d obviously have liked more investment – there’s never enough to meet our ambitions! But they have been really good to work with in terms of giving us the space to make our own changes and create efficiencies, with the freedom to reinvest them on the front line.
What’s your favourite….
…city walk?
I live in the suburbs of Sheffield with Ecclesall Woods on my doorstep. It’s a carpet of bluebells in spring and a really important green space for locals.
…countryside walk?
Well I suppose it’s my kids’ favourite walk to the top of Surprise View in the Peak District. They seem more interested in walking vertically than horizontally at the moment.
…piece of walking kit?
I’ve had the same pair of Caterpillar walking boots for the past 13 years. It was so painful breaking them in that I vowed never to change them, despite being seriously dilapidated and about 15 times heavier than any sensible human being would wear these days.
…view?
The Upper and Lower Lakes in Killarney National Park, County Kerry. My gran took me there as a child and now I take my own children there. It’s timeless.
…post-walk tipple?
Guinness, no question.
- This entry was posted on: Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
- Filed under: Features, People, Walk Winter 2009
- Tags: Coast Path, Environment, Natural England, South Downs National Park
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