Urban White Paper includes 
Green Flag Park Awards

The Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott launched the Urban White Paper on the 16 November. The White Paper supports the Green Flag Parks Award Scheme developed by Mark Davis of PAN UK (then the Pesticides Trust) in 1996 as an offshoot of the Local Authorities Project. The scheme has long been recognised as a national benchmark for quality in public parks. Fifty-five awards were made this year and with the inclusion of the scheme in the White Paper it is hoped that many more parks and local communities will benefit.
    The action the government is taking to improve parks, play areas and public spaces includes: new sources of funding, preventing the loss of school playing fields, raising the standards of local services and taking environmental action. 

The parks section is included in Chapter four: Places for People of ‘Our Towns and Cities: the Future’ and can be downloaded from the DETR website 

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No.50, December 2000, p19]