A PPG17 open space assessment worked by pairing a desk review of existing policy with fresh field survey, then sorting every parcel of open space into types and judging each one on quality and value.
What did a PPG17 assessment actually measure?
A PPG17 open space assessment worked by pairing a desk review of existing policy with fresh field survey, then sorting every parcel of open space into types and judging each one on quality and value. The method came from Planning Policy Guidance 17, the UK guidance that told local authorities to audit what they had, consult residents, and set provision standards before writing policy. The output was a report a council could defend: what exists, where it is, who uses it, and what is missing.
PPG17 asked for two things at once: an audit of provision and an assessment of need. The audit counted and classified open space: parks and gardens, natural and semi-natural green space, amenity green space, provision for children and young people, outdoor sports facilities, allotments, cemeteries, and civic spaces. Each site was recorded with its size, ownership, access points, and facilities.
The assessment of need came from consultation and from local data: household surveys, school and youth consultations, sports club questionnaires, and sometimes visitor counts at peak weekends. The two halves were then read together. A ward might have plenty of green space by area but no equipped play area within a ten-minute walk, and that gap was the finding that mattered.
Quality and value were scored separately, which is the part people often forget. A site could be poor in quality but high in value because it served an isolated estate, or well kept but low in value because an identical park sat across the road. The scoring matrix made that visible instead of hiding it behind a single number.
One documented example of this kind of work is the PPG17 open space assessment carried out for the London Borough of Harrow by Ashley Godfrey Associates, a planning and leisure consultancy based in Ware, Hertfordshire that traded from 2007 to 2019. The firm's archived pages describe the same sequence: audit, consult, map, then advise on standards.
How were surveys and audits of local provision run?
An audit started with a list, not a walk. Officers pulled together every known site from the council's own asset records, the local plan proposals map, the green infrastructure strategy, school grounds where public access existed, and any sites held by parish councils or trusts. That list was then checked on the ground, because records drift: a field sold years ago can still sit on an old map.
Field survey sheets were deliberately plain. Typical columns: site reference, address, grid reference, size in hectares, ownership, public access yes or no, and a short condition note. Surveyors walked each site once, at a consistent time of year, and photographed the main entrance and any damaged equipment. Consistency mattered more than detail, since the scores had to be comparable across hundreds of sites.
Consultation ran alongside the survey. Household questionnaires asked how often people visited, how they travelled, and what stopped them. Club and school surveys covered pitch and play needs that a household form would miss. Drop-in sessions and parish meetings caught the groups least likely to return a form.
Audits of this kind also fed wider performance work. In the same period, consultancies in this field were helping councils build play performance indicators with Play England and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and benchmarking play space against the standards published by Fields in Trust, then still known as the National Playing Fields Association. Those benchmarks gave a council a national reference point next to its own local numbers.
How do you map open space and catchments?
Mapping turned the audit into geography. Every site was plotted with a boundary, not a dot, because area and shape drive how far people will walk to reach it. Catchments were then drawn around each site using agreed distances: commonly 300 metres for a small local play area, 600 metres for a larger park, and up to 1,200 metres or a short drive for a country park or major sports facility.
The distances were not invented per project. They were agreed with the council at the start, written into the method statement, and applied evenly. That agreement is what made the maps usable in a planning committee, because a developer or resident could see exactly which standard was being applied.
Catchment maps were overlaid on deprivation data, housing growth allocations, and barriers such as railways, rivers, and dual carriageways. A straight-line circle that crossed a motorway with no footbridge was not real access, so surveyors adjusted boundaries by hand. The result was a set of maps showing which homes sat inside a catchment and which sat in a gap.
Heritage and landscape designations were mapped on a separate layer, since a site can be valuable for reasons beyond recreation. This is where mapping work overlaps with heritage mapping and evidence-base work that planning consultancies also handled.
What did the findings change?
The findings usually landed in three places. First, a set of local provision standards: how much open space of each type per thousand residents, how far people should have to travel, and what quality was expected. Second, an action plan listing specific sites for improvement, acquisition, or disposal. Third, the evidence base for the local development plan, which is what gave the standards weight when developers submitted applications.
A common outcome was a shift from counting hectares to counting access. A district could meet an area target on paper while a new estate had nowhere for children to play within walking distance. Once catchments were mapped, that gap became a specific, mappable finding rather than a general complaint.
Another outcome was better disposal decisions. Sites scoring low on both quality and value were sometimes released, and the money went into improving sites that scored high on value but low on quality. That trade-off only works if both scores exist and are documented.
Where does PPG17 fit now?
PPG17 was replaced in England by the National Planning Policy Framework in 2012, and the supporting practice guidance that followed it. The framework kept the underlying expectation: plan positively for open space, sport, and recreation, and base decisions on robust and up-to-date evidence. The vocabulary changed more than the method did.
Assessments today often follow the same shape: audit, consult, map, set standards, monitor. What has shifted is the framing. Open space is now more often assessed alongside green infrastructure, biodiversity net gain, and access to nature, and climate adaptation has become a standard lens. Playing pitch strategies have their own methodology, updated separately, and often run in parallel with an open space study.
For anyone reading an older assessment, the useful question is not whether it used PPG17 or the framework. It is whether the audit was complete, the consultation reached beyond the usual respondents, the catchments were adjusted for real barriers, and the standards were adopted in policy. Those four checks separate a document that sits on a shelf from one that shapes where a park or a play area actually gets built.
What to look for in an open space evidence base
A usable study names its method, dates its survey, and states its limitations. It shows site boundaries on a map, not just a list. It separates quality from value. It reports who was consulted and how many responded. It sets standards that a planning officer can apply to a single application without re-running the whole study.
It also ages. Housing growth, new schools, and changed walking routes all move the catchments. Most councils refresh the evidence base every five to ten years, or sooner where a large allocation is coming forward. Reading the date on the cover is the fastest way to judge whether the numbers still describe the place.