Natural England’s Green Infrastructure Design Guide

A new guide to Green Infrastructure and design is due to be published in December. It will prove invaluable to the profession.

by Clare Warburton

Green Infrastructure has the power to transform towns and cities by making them greener, healthier, climate resilient places that encourage investment.

Green infrastructure 1 puts people and nature at the heart of towns and cities. It supports nature recovery and provides the everyday places where people can connect with nature close to home.

Good quality Green Infrastructure is important for health and wellbeing and the economy. We know that two hours of contact with nature a week can significantly boost health and wellbeing.2 Green spaces have been shown to generate economic value of £25.2 billion p.a. through recreational visits. 3 As a place for people to meet, relax, exercise, grow food or take part in nature-based activities, GI can support community cohesion and help to address issues of social and environmental inequality.

Green Infrastructure contributes to net zero by capturing carbon and providing networks of green travel routes for walking or cycling. It helps us to adapt to climate change by cooling urban areas, reducing flood risk through natural flood management.

However, GI is often seen as a ‘nice to have’ rather than a critical infrastructure, and can be designed out of new development. There are also complex barriers for people accessing green space, some of which can be mitigated through good design.

To address these issues, as part of its Green Infrastructure Framework, Natural England is working with the Landscape Institute and a crossgovernment steering group to develop a Green Infrastructure Design Guide.

This Guide aims to provide practical, evidence-based advice on how to design good quality GI in a way that helps to create beautiful nature-rich accessible places, contributing to local character and distinctiveness. It is designed to work alongside and complement the National Model Design Code and National Design Guide. 4 Primarily written for Local Authorities, particularly those who are responsible for generating design codes, it will provide advice on how to design, deliver and manage GI to best benefit from its multiple outcomes. However, it is also intended to be of value to a wider readership that includes planners, urban designers, engineers, landscape architects and neighbourhood planning bodies, as well as anyone responsible for the development and management of accessible green space and wider green infrastructure. It will help other sectors such as health, transport, energy, climate change, education and regeneration, to identify opportunities to deliver their policies through good GI. The guide will advise on:

– How to apply the national GI Framework, including Principles and Standards, to design

Hulme, Manchester

© Martin Moss, Natural England

– How to design GI features as ‘building blocks’ of a larger connected network

– Illustrate how to combine GI features in different ‘area types’ to create multifunctional and connected networks at different scales and in different types of places

– How to design GI to meet identified needs, with a particular focus on nature, health, climate and net zero,

– How to develop landscape-led GI with a focus on landscape character and local distinctiveness

– The application of terms and tools such as Biodiversity Net Gain, Urban Greening Factors, Local Nature

Recovery Strategies in the context of GI design

– Good practice case studies and sources of further information The guidance will be published in December 2022 alongside other products being launched as part of Natural England’s Green Infrastructure Framework.

Clare Warburton is Principal Adviser for Green Infrastructure in Natural England. She has over 20 years’ experience in the environment sector, both public and private, with a particular focus on urban greening and embedding green infrastructure in development through strategic planning and good design.