New CABE framework aims to highlight the true financial value of drastically undervalued public parks

Most councils value their public parks at just £1 each, according to a report by CABE Space. This makes them financially invisible and leads to repeated under-investment. In reality, the value of a single park's physical assets - excluding land value - can be well over £100 million.

CABE is proposing a new framework for valuation of parks. This takes into account plants and trees, paths, benches and structures. Using the new framework, the value of Sefton Park in Liverpool, for example, is calculated at £108 million. It is valued on the local authority's accounts at just £1.

A copy of Making the invisible visible: the real value of park assets is available online.

Public parks are often listed as having little or no financial value, unless they have been recently refurbished or benefited from significant capital investment. CABE's suggested framework for local authorities does not include land value in the calculations.

The framework will also help local authorities understand the implications of meeting the requirements of the new ‘whole of government accounts’ system.

Sarah Gaventa, director of CABE Space, said: 'Public parks are chronically undervalued. You only have to visit a garden centre to know that trees, paving, shrubs and benches are not worthless. It’s astonishing that most councils value their public parks at only £1 on their lists of assets. It matters because if you have a building on your stocks valued at £5 million and a park valued at £1, then maintaining the building will appear the better investment. But if the park is valued at £100 million, it merits an appropriate maintenance budget and investment in the people that manage it.’

This anomaly is due to council accounting methods: many parks were common land or bequeathed, so were never ‘bought’ and have no original value. Depreciation is often factored in even though living things become more valuable as they mature.

The new valuation framework is described in CABE Space’s report Making the invisible visible: the real value of park assets. It proposes that asset value should not be the only consideration when making investment decisions, and identifies park use – the number of visits a park receives – as one indicator of the wider value provided by a green space to communities. The framework can provide better evidence to support the transfer of assets to communities and negotiate Section106 planning agreements.