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National strategies

The Cleaner, Safer, Greener cross-government programme brings together central departments with policy responsibilities that have an impact, directly or indirectly, on public space. Priorities for the programme are:
  • Creating attractive and welcoming parks
  • play areas and public spaces
  • Improving the physical fabric and infrastructure of places
  • Making places cleaner and maintaining them better
  • Making places safer and tackling anti-social behaviour
  • Involving and empowering local people and communities
  • Catering for children and young people, and tackling inequalities

Public Service Agreements (PSAs): PSAs set out the key improvements the public can expect from government expenditure. Each PSA describes a department’s main aim, objectives and performance targets which help it focus its activities.

Communities and Local Government’s performance targets for the 2005 to 2008 spending review period include PSA 8:

"“To lead the delivery of cleaner, safer, greener public spaces and improve the quality of the built environment in deprived areas and across the country with measurable improvements by 2008.”" -



The government’s vision for the renaissance of England’s green spaces seeks to ensure that by 2008 the majority of local areas in England will have at least one quality green space – with a Green Flag Award to prove it and over 75% of people will be satisfied with their local green spaces.

Communities and Local Government: In October 2006, Communities and Local Government published Strong and Prosperous Communities –The Local Government White Paper. The paper sets out proposals to give a stronger role for councils to lead their communities, shape neighbourhoods and bring local public services together.

Neighbourhood renewal: In January 2005, ODPM (now Communities and Local Government) and the Strategy Unit published their joint report on improving the prospects of people living in areas of multiple deprivation in England. This restated the aim of the Government’s national strategy, Making it Happen: A New Commitment to Neighbourhood Renewal, which is to ensure that, by 2021, no one is at a serious disadvantage because of where they live.

Neighbourhood renewal uses the power of partnership, harnessed through Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs), which unite an area’s major players from the public, private, community and voluntary sectors.