Member's statement: Outdoor Recreation Strategy

Member's statement by Mr Robbie Butler on 23 June 2026.

MLA: Mr Robbie Butler
Party at the time: Ulster Unionist Party
Date: 23 June 2026
Type: Member's statement
Business: Members' Statements
Heading: Outdoor Recreation Strategy
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5636716

Text

I rise today to highlight the urgent need for a new outdoor recreation strategy for Northern Ireland. The latest People in the Outdoors Monitor provides compelling evidence of the value that people place on our natural environment. Some 70% of adults spend time outdoors in natural places at least once a week, generating an estimated 134 million visits each year. Four in five people would like to spend more of their free time outdoors. The great majority of visits deliver benefits for physical health, mental well-being and nature connection, with many people joining me for a run every week. Access to those benefits is not equal. Only 17% of adults — around one in six — say that they have local green space within a five-minute walk of their home. That contrasts with mapping that indicates that 48% of households are within 400 metres of accessible green space or off-road trail. The difference between what exists on a map and what people experience in daily life should concern us all. A place may be nearby, but it is of limited value if it is inaccessible, unsafe, poorly connected, inadequately maintained or does not feel welcoming. The rural figures are particularly stark, and that should surprise most of us. While 63% of urban households are within 400 metres of green space or a trail, the figure is just under 20% for rural households. That falls to under 13% in open countryside and small villages. Being surrounded by countryside does not necessarily mean having safe, legal or practical access to it. Too many rural residents must travel by car or walk on roads that were never designed for recreation. Outdoor recreation is not a marginal leisure issue; it contributes to preventive health, mental well-being, social connection, rural development, active travel, sustainable tourism and care for our environment. It supports priorities across several Departments, yet, as with many things here, responsibility for it remains fragmented.
Northern Ireland's most recent outdoor recreational action plan was published in 2014, which predates most of us here — not you, Mr Speaker — but much has changed since then, and many of its actions are now outdated, incomplete and no longer equal to the challenge before us. In December 2024, the Minister confirmed that there was a commitment in the environmental improvement plan to publish an outdoor recreation strategy, and that was to be progressed as resources permitted. Will the AERA Minister work with his Executive colleagues to initiate a new, ambitious and properly resourced outdoor recreation strategy for Northern Ireland? It should provide clear cross-governmental leadership, address inequalities in local access and set out practical progress. Like, I am sure, everybody else here, I understand that the practical outcome of that would be better physical health, better mental health and connectivity for our communities.

468 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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