Natural England - Evidence work area: reconnecting people engagement and access
Evidence work area: reconnecting people engagement and access
Natural England aims to reconnect people to their natural environments: enabling more people to enjoy, understand and take action for it. Our evidence programme focuses on improving our understanding of people’s attitudes and behaviours towards the natural world; how people use the natural world; and the social and economic benefits that directly and indirectly accrue to individuals and communities from a healthy natural environment, for example people’s health and wellbeing and childhood learning.
For other information on our work reconnecting people see Enjoying the natural environment .
Resources
Monitoring Engagement with the Natural Environment
Natural England publications
Related websites
Natural England evidence projects
The evidence projects related to this work area can be seen below. See also projects related to our National Nature Reserves. For a list of the evidence generated by our evidence programme since 2009 see Evidence generated to support our work related to people and access to the natural environment.
Research
| ID | Title | Description | Contact |
|---|---|---|---|
| RP0419 | Accessible green space: map based evidence | Natural England holds data on c80% of accessible land. This project aims to combine data held across Natural England in a consistent way; clean data; assess the actual coverage; identify where there are data gaps and assess the potential to make data available to share with partners. The project will also develop applications for the evidence base including: analysis to present visual evidence relating to green space and health; deprivation and other indices; monitoring to measure the provision of green space; and assessment of using data/maps to support a calculator/tool for local communities. The outputs will be a report and maps on WebMap.
Natural England's financial contribution to this project is currently estimated to be: £3,000.00 | Rachel Penny |
Monitoring
| ID | Title | Description | Contact |
|---|---|---|---|
| RP0195 | Monitoring and evaluation of the Walking for Health programme | Walking for Health (WFH) encourages people to become physically active in their local communities. A network of schemes across England offer regular short walks over easy terrain with trained walk leaders. The aim of this project is to monitor and evaluate the WfH programme. The WfH database will store personal information on walkers including health data, details of walk schemes, the walks associated with the umbrella scheme and logs of attendance registers of walkers activity. This will be used to monitor, analyse and help evaluate the expanding walking schemes from 2009 to 2012. Partnership with the Department of Health.
Natural England's financial contribution to this project is currently estimated to be: £22,687.00 | Alan Pearsons |
| RP0504 | Standards for Access and Engagement On-site Monitoring | Natural England is looking to establish and support common onsite visitor monitoring standards and disseminate best practice, both internally and across the sector. The aim of the project is to develop, test and pilot standard on-site visitor monitoring approaches at three different levels of intensity low, medium and high that can be adopted by a range of access schemes/projects/partner organisations to enable consistent monitoring of how people access and engage with the natural environment, at the local site level. This project is to compliment MENE working more at the local site level.
| Rob Keane |
| RP0802 | Monitor of Engagement with the Natural Environment 2 (MENE 2) | Monitor of Engagement with the Natural Environment (MENE) is a sample survey of the adult population which provides data on visits to the natural environment at regional and national level. It is being undertaken as part of a weekly in-home omnibus survey. It provides information to support a range of Natural England projects and programmes. The first 3 years of fieldwork have been completed and a 4th year [2012/13] is now underway.MENE has been commissioned by Natural England, in conjunction with Defra and the Forestry Commission.
Natural England's financial contribution to this project is currently estimated to be: £317,200.00 | Erica Wayman |
Evaluation
| ID | Title | Description | Contact |
|---|---|---|---|
| RP0258 | Evaluation of the Access To Nature Grants Programme | The Access to Nature Grants Programme is part of Big Lottery's Changing Spaces Programme. This is a formative programme evaluation reporting initially to the Project Steering Group, with a final report to be published in 2013. Every project will do its own self-evaluation, and 20 projects will be selected for detailed case study.
Natural England's financial contribution to this project is currently estimated to be: £154,228.86 | Alison Hill |
