| Green Flag Award | |
|---|---|
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 Recognition of well managed open spaces. | |
| Standards organization | Keep Britain Tidy On behalf ofMHCLG. |
| Effective region | Worldwide; primarily United Kingdom. |
| Effective since | 1996; 30 years ago (1996) |
| Product category | Parks, publicly accessible spaces. |
| Type of standard | Industry |
| Website | www |
TheGreen Flag Award is an international accreditation given to publicly accessible parks and open spaces, managed under licence from theDepartment for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, a UK Government department, byKeep Britain Tidy, who also administers the scheme inEngland.
The Green Flag Award was introduced in 1996, and first awarded in 1997, by theMinistry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) with the intention of establishing agreed standards of good management, to help to justify and evaluate funding and to raise park attendance. The scheme was managed byCivic Trust, on MHCLG's behalf, until they lost the contract and the charity went bust in 2009.[1]
The scheme has been managed by Keep Britain Tidy since 2012,[2] with sister organisationsKeep Scotland Beautiful,Keep Wales Tidy andTIDY Northern Ireland delivering the scheme across the UK, and various other bodies delivering worldwide.
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| Green Flags on Display inManor Park, London;Boscombe Chine Gardens, Dorset;Baysgarth Park, Lincolnshire; andBournemouth Gardens, Dorset. | |
The scheme's aim is to promote standards of good management and best-practice amongst the green space sector. It is described by its issuers, Keep Britain Tidy, as an "internationally recognised award that is a benchmark for well-managed green space". As of October 2021, 2227 parks and open spaces held a Green Flag Award.[3]
Whilepublic parks make up most of the awardees, the Green Flag Award is also issued to sites with different uses, such asLoughborough University andBluewater Shopping Centre, for the management of their grounds.[4]
The Green Flag Award is managed under licence from theDepartment for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, a UK Government department, byKeep Britain Tidy, who also administers the scheme inEngland[5] and several other countries, including Australia and the United States.[6]
The owners of spaces that wish to hold the accreditation, pay a fee to be assessed by volunteer judges on an annual basis with a process involvingsecret shoppers and inspection of both the park and the owner's management plans. The aspects that spaces are judged on are:[7]
A failure to meet the judges' standards can result in the accreditation being withdrawn; one example of this is North London'sFinsbury Park which lost its Green Flag in 2018.[8]