10-03-2025
Urban wild lives
Case study
©National Trust Images / Trevor Ray Hart
In conversation with
Parks Services Manager at Birmingham City Council
Part of
In this interview series, urban insiders share their experiences, top tips and ideas to help more people enjoy time in nature close to home. Head behind-the-scenes with local authority teams, sector leaders and community-based organisations on a mission to deliver lasting change across the UK.
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Simon Needle has, by his own admission, “been around green spaces for a long time”. In an earlier role in the planning department, he saw the health and environmental challenges of Birmingham’s population growth, climate change and biodiversity loss.
Determined to turn challenges into opportunities, Simon has spent the last few years championing new ways of working. This approach is helping nature to recover, whilst providing more equal access to quality parks and green spaces for residents.
It’s all come together in the ‘City of Nature Plan’, where Simon and the team set out the part nature can play in parks, green spaces and trees through a public health and climate resilience lens. The hope is that the plan will help build a ‘Bolder Greener Birmingham’ by 2047.
This is Simon’s story of how Birmingham dug into the data to build a case for change. And how strong partnerships and community support are helping to deliver that change where people and nature need it most.
Simon Needle
Looking back, Simon identifies multiple drivers for change in the council’s approach to green space and green infrastructure in Birmingham.
“Budget pressures called for new thinking about land resources” he says, including how it was released for development. There were early signs of the impact of climate change and biodiversity loss on the city too.
Piecemeal reports into the health, economic, environmental and social benefits – or ecosystem services – of green infrastructure showed a stark inequality in access to nature, and its potential impact on health and wellbeing.
“But we needed something more than just numbers” says Simon.
A multi-functional team was formed, including parks services, planning and development, public health and external facilitators. They went on to develop and adopt an impressive suite of tools and mapping systems, to engage busy councillors in the most deprived wards as champions for green infrastructure investment.
Whilst well-intended, these tools have the potential to stir up sensitivities as they call out places impacted by environmental injustice and nature inequality. How did Simon counter this?
Acknowledging “it is always a risk”, he instead used the stark results to educate communities about the benefits of green space – empowering them to “champion for change”.
‘It’s about being upfront and proactive with people he says, “telling them that because of their environment they are at risk of certain things” and then, more importantly, explaining what they can do to change that.’
Now, Simon sees a difference in how communities respond to consultations around regeneration. “Before, they were asking for more services like doctors or supermarkets. Now they’re asking for more quality green space”.
Birmingham is the first local authority in the UK to develop a measurement tool for environmental justice. Each ward was given a relative score based on the indices of multiple deprivation, access to green space and possible impacts of climate change. The results were mapped from least (red) to most (green) ‘just’. The priority is to turn red and then amber areas to green.
The Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (CRVA) map builds on the success of the Environmental Justice map. It helps the council develop a more equitable and resilient city, scoring areas of Birmingham on factors that may influence the effects of climate change. The CRVA map can be viewed here, filtered by ward or Lower Super Output Area (LSOA).
The Future Parks Standard sets a benchmark of quality for Birmingham City Council parks. Over the 25-year City of Nature Plan, all parks will be assessed against the plan’s five themes, with priority action plans for those falling short of ‘Fair’. Parks in wards with the highest score for environmental injustice are first on the list.
Birmingham TreePeople plants, protects and promotes trees and the urban forest. Click to view their TreePlotter map, which enables people to find out more about their local trees and nearby forestry projects. It’s a vital way for the council and its partners to facilitate community conversations, bringing residents on board much earlier in the planting process.
Simon Needle
Long before the City of Nature Plan, Simon advocated for the benefits of partnership working across environment, planning and health.
The campaign for Birmingham’s climate emergency in 2019 introduced him to “a number of players” who went on to provide invaluable consultation for the plan.
From national charities to local Friends Groups and individuals, Simon spotted a “shared agenda for change” with potential to drive change in the city.
“We looked at how we could best work together to secure resource and deliver the City of Nature Plan” says Simon. The answer was a pioneering City of Nature Alliance, “drawing on and deploying our collective skills”.
Critically, the Alliance which can be found here, opens up larger, longer-term funding opportunities that could otherwise be out of reach to smaller voluntary, community and social enterprises (VCSEs).
Reflecting on what the council can deliver through the Alliance, Simon quips “it’s the type of stuff we used to do when we had masses of money and capacity”.
The City of Nature Plan’s ambition to reach 1,000 green spaces is inspired by Birmingham’s heritage as a city of 1,000 trades. And Simon, too, is looking to the past to inform the future of urban greening in the city.
“It’s not just about improving the quality of green space. It’s also about people’s wellbeing and nature connectedness” he explains.
Here are four ways that tried-and-tested approaches to community engagement and partnerships have been re-shaped to build a green and blue city fit for the future.
“Day-to-day, people are probably not looking at the green stuff” Simon says. Working with partners in the community is helping to change that. For example, Birmingham TreePeople’s school posters competition reignited the spark between people and nature. It “enabled people to see the money invested”, encouraging longer-term stewardship of ‘their’ tree.
Partners sign up to a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) when joining the City of Nature Alliance. It “sets out how we work together, focussing on priority wards, to deliver the City of Nature Plan” Simon explains. In practice, it’s more than a shared vision. Having dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s, the MoU opens doors to better funding. “We’re more agile, for example in how we dispersed Commonwealth Games Legacy funds across the Alliance” says Simon.
From new acronyms to ways of working, Simon says it’s about understanding the “language” of other departments and finding the common goal. “It’s not easy to start with” he adds, but cross-department support for green infrastructure is “starting to become the norm”. Right now, he’s working with colleagues in Highways to maximise the benefits of a new cycleway with pop-up parks.
Birmingham City Council listened to five hundred people’s stories of nature during consultation for the City of Nature plan. Click to read about Birmingham’s Earth Stories, which explored peoples’ childhood connections with nature, and asked what they would like for their children. They sought out marginalised voices through community outreach. It’s just one example of the council’s evolving approach to old-fashioned ‘conversations’ with communities about the value of green space.
Simon Needle
So what does this mean for people and nature in Birmingham?
For a start, colleagues are “more supportive at looking at multi-functional green infrastructure”. Far from Simon’s early experiences in planning, many other departments “think about how they play their part”.
The pioneering work has impact beyond the city boundaries too. The West Midlands Combined Authority has applied the CRVA process in climate adaptation work across the combined authority area.
And wider still, a city pilot with Natural England saw learnings integrated into the development of country’s first Green Infrastructure Framework here.
Take a look at the UK Tree Equity Score, too. It was co-developed by the Woodland Trust, using Birmingham’s environmental justice baseline to make correlations with tree equity meaning “we can now compare equity in our city to other places” says Simon.
But perhaps most poignantly, Simon reflects on a “self-fulfilling prophecy” in the positive changes he’s starting to see. It’s “everything we should have done sooner”.
“There’s now the equivalent of millions of pounds being invested in Birmingham for the benefit of people and nature. It shows, perhaps, that we have a bigger reach than we first thought.”
The way Birmingham treats its natural environment and thinks about its parks and green spaces is changing.
The City of Nature sets out how the whole council, its partners and Birmingham residents will deliver more equitable access to nature, improve public health and strengthen climate resilience.
©National Trust Images/Paul Harris
Click on the links below to delve deeper into the work to deliver a greener, safer, better connected and more inclusive Birmingham.
Our Future City: Central Birmingham Framework 2045 is a bold and exciting vision for Birmingham – a modern city that continues to evolve to meet the needs of a young and growing population.
Read the frameworkThe Urban Forest Master Plan lays out how the city will develop and manage its trees and woodland in the years to come. It brings together the aspirations of the council, urban forest managers, key partners and stakeholders.
Discover Birmingham TreePeopleNaturally Birmingham is a forum for all the people and actions that are helping to deliver the City of Nature Plan. It shares information and provides spaces for communication around the city’s green spaces.
Visit the forumThere is lots of government guidance and support for local authority environment, greenspace and planning officers. Take a look at what’s available in your country.
The Green Infrastructure Framework is designed to help create nature-rich towns and cities, helping millions realise the benefits of accessing nature. It supports planners and developers to deliver quality green infrastructure, including as part of the government’s ambitious targets for new homes over the next 5 years. There is a detailed how-to guide for local authorities who want to develop a green infrastructure strategy and policies.
Read the frameworkGuidance, tools, factsheets and more to help deliver the multiple functions and benefits of green infrastructure in Scotland.
Visit NatureScot
A guide to key Natural Resources Wales’ datasets and how to use them as part of a Green Infrastructure Assessment.
Visit the site
Future Parks Accelerator (FPA) was a collaboration between The National Lottery Heritage Fund, the National Trust and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC).
Nine areas across the UK were selected to be part of this pioneering programme to build a sustainable future for urban parks and green spaces.
FPA proved that nature has a critical role to play in towns and cities, helping to improve health and wellbeing, mitigate the impact of climate change, enhance biodiversity and grow the green economy.
These pioneering places laid the foundations for millions more people to enjoy time in nature close to home through future projects like Nature Towns and Cities.
