The Royal Parks

With increasing urbanisation of London, some royal hunting or tenant lands were preserved as freely accessible open space and became public parks with the introduction of the Crown Lands Act 1851. There are today eight parks formally described by this name and they cover almost 2,000 hectares (4,900 acres) of land in Greater London.

The parks were originally used as hunting grounds for the royal family. In the 1500s, King Henry VIII extended the Palace of Whitehall into what's now St. James's Park and The Green Park.

Over the years, there has been a gradual transition towards public accessibility for these areas. Hyde Park was opened to the public in 1673 by King Charles II.

• Richmond Park 955 hectares (2,360 acres)^[3]
• Bushy Park 445 hectares (1,100 acres)^[4]
• The Regent's Park & Primrose Hill 166 hectares (410 acres)^[5]
• Hyde Park 140 hectares (350 acres)^[6]
• Kensington Gardens 107 hectares (260 acres)^[7]
• Greenwich Park 74 hectares (180 acres)^[8]
• St James's Park 23 hectares (57 acres)^[9]
• The Green Park 16 hectares (40 acres)^[10]

Five of these parks – The Regent’s Park, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, The Green Park, and St James's Park – are situated in central London.

The parks are owned by the Crown, with responsibility for them resting with the Secretary of State for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The Royal Parks charity manages the parks on behalf of the government.

 

The Royal Parks charity follows a set vision, purpose and its values.

• Vision: To provide free access to beautiful, natural and historic parks, which improve the quality of life, health and wellbeing — which is particularly important in a city environment.
• Purpose: The Royal Parks is the charity which manages, protects and improves and parks in an exemplary and sustainable manner so that everyone, now and in the future, has the opportunity to enjoy the natural and historic environments.
• Values: The Royal Parks charity is responsible, excellent, inclusive, open and respectful.

The charity runs programmes of activities and events to encourage outdoor recreation and public access to these areas. It also allows third parties to run such activities within the grounds to further these objectives, but commercial activity is tightly controlled.

The Royal Parks charity regulates non-personal filming, audio recording, and photography through licences. It issues news permits for media coverage of breaking news in the parks, with holders required to comply with specific legislation:

• The Royal Parks and Other Open Spaces Regulations 1997^[11]
• Royal Parks and Other Open Spaces (Amendment) Regulations 2004^[12]

As well as the eight royal parks in its care, the charity also manages Brompton Cemetery and Victoria Tower Gardens. It manages 5,000 acres of historic parkland in London, and its responsibilities include the preservation of 170,000 trees, 21 lakes and ponds, 15 miles of riverbed, and a population of over 1,000 wild deer.

In 2010, the then Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, proposed the devolution of control over the Royal Parks to the Greater London Authority.^[13] The government put forward proposals for this transfer later in the same year.^[14] While The Royal Parks expressed support for the plan, it was not ultimately implemented.^[15]

The parks were managed by the Royal Parks Agency (an executive agency of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport) until the agency joined with charity the Royal Parks Foundation to form a new charity – The Royal Parks – launched in July 2017. The parks are policed by the Royal Parks Operational Command Unit of the Metropolitan Police (the English section of the previous force policing the parks, the Royal Parks Constabulary, has been abolished).

Some funding for The Royal Parks comes from a central government grant (20%) and its own charitable fundraising (80%). The Royal Parks charity generates the majority of its income from commercial activities such as catering and staging public events, as well as through grants and individual donations.

The day-to-day management of each park and area is managed by a Park Manager, who receives support from a team of staff and contractors. Their responsibilities include overseeing the preservation of natural landscapes and maintaining heritage sites, roads, and other structures within and around the parks.

The Royal Parks' charitable objects set out the main purpose of the charity and what it aims to achieve. They are:

• To protect, conserve, maintain and care for the Royal Parks, including their natural and designed landscapes and built environment, to a high standard consistent with their historical, horticultural, environmental and architectural importance;
• To promote the use and enjoyment of the Royal Parks for public recreation, health and wellbeing, including through the provision of sporting and cultural activities and events which effectively advance the objects;
• To maintain and develop the biodiversity of the Royal Parks, including the protection of their wildlife and natural environment, together with promoting sustainability in the management and use of the Royal Parks;
• To support the advancement of education by promoting public understanding of the history, culture, heritage and natural environment of the Royal Parks and (by way of comparison) elsewhere; and,
• To promote national heritage including by hosting and facilitating ceremonies of state or of national importance within and in the vicinity of the Royal Parks.

The Royal Parks declared a climate emergency in 2020 with the charity. The parks are well protected to allow the natural environment to grow, and they are considered “a huge resource of natural capital that we must conserve and enhance”, causing the parks to be branded the “lungs of London”.^[11][12]

The charity launched the Help Nature Thrive programme in 2022 with the aim of enhancing sustainability and biodiversity within the capital.^[16] All parks adhere to a sustainable management plan, implementing various initiatives to safeguard the survival of natural habitats.^[17]

The Royal Parks charity is committed to maintaining the gardens in order to preserve the natural habitats for local wildlife. More recent plans have included a £5 million grant to transform Greenwich Park and a transformation of a former private plant nursery into a public memorial garden in The Regent’s Park.^[18][19]

In previous years, the charity has supported restoration projects for both Bushy Park and Richmond Park, addressing long-term concerns to protect the natural habitats in the face of climate change.^[20][21]

The Royal Parks charity is led by a board of trustees, which decides how the charity is run, how it spends its money and ensures what it does is for the benefit of the parks and their visitors. The trustees are led by a chairman and are appointed for their skills and experience. Alongside some ex-officio roles, others are appointed by the Secretary of State for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Greater London Authority (GLA). They are non-executive and unpaid.

The board is chaired by Loyd Grossman.^[22]

The executive management team is responsible for the daily operations of The Royal Parks charity, and under the leadership of the chief executive, Andrew Scattergood, they propose the organisation's policies and strategies to the board of trustees. Additionally, the team manages a workforce of staff and volunteers.

The Royal Parks are owned by the Monarch in right of the Crown; however, under the Crown Lands Act 1851, statutory responsibility for the management and upkeep rests with the government. From 1993 until 2017, The Royal Parks Agency managed the parks on behalf of the Secretary of State.

In 2017, The Royal Parks Charity was created to manage the parks under a contract with the government. Appointments to the charity’s Board are made by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, as well as the Mayor of London.

The parks are open to everyone, but those using the parks are expected to adhere to regulations issued under the Parks Regulations Acts 1872 – 1926. These regulations are deemed necessary for the proper management, maintenance, and protection of the estate. The Royal Parks and Other Open Spaces Regulations 1997 (as subsequently amended) remain extant.^[23]

Since 2014, Vinci Facilities has been contracted to maintain the Royal Parks, employing as cleaners/attendants mainly African migrants. Vinci had originally tendered separate bids cost for minimum wage staff and Living Wage staff – and its minimum wage bid was accepted, meaning that the approximately 50 cleaners/attendants were earning £8.21 an hour by 2019. Then, with several joining UVW union in pursuit of the London Living Wage (£10.75) and going on strike in October 2019 with further strikes planned, the Royal Parks board agreed to fulfill their wage demands in December 2019, backdated to 1 November.^[24]

However, during the tendering process, Vinci and Royal Parks had also determined purely statutory entitlements in respect of overtime, on-call allowance, sick pay, annual leave, pensions, redundancy pay and maternity pay – and these inequalities with Royal Parks employees persisted. The two employers had allegedly repeatedly reviewed the general terms of Vinci's staff between 2014 and 2019, and Royal Parks had never opted to improve any part of their contracts.

It was announced in April 2020 that the barrister Changez Khan and 15 claimants would bring a racial discrimination "landmark test case" against the Royal Parks charity. Khan claimed that "the difference in pay until December last year and ongoing difference in other conditions have a 'disparate impact' on black and ethnic minority workers, as they are more likely to be outsourced agency workers".

On appeal, The Royal Parks was found not guilty.

• Parks and open spaces in London
• Walking in London

• Official website
• "The Royal Parks, registered charity no. 1172042". Charity Commission for England and Wales.