We are a group of five students at the University of Birmingham who are investigating solutions to childhood obesity and seeking to promote a healthy lifestyle in Birmingham.

With the rate of childhood obesity being 5.5% higher in Birmingham than the national average, it is important that we address the causes that have led to this crisis. Larches Park in Sparkbrook provides a green space for the community to use, yet, from conversations with some parents in the area, the lighting is not sufficient to generate a public feeling of safety or a safe atmosphere. In Autumn and Winter in particular, it gets dark just as children are leaving school, preventing many of them from using this space and engaging in physical activity. Having safe spaces for children to exercise is crucial for their health and therefore, we are petitioning Birmingham City Council to install floodlights on the playing field in the park, to improve the public perception of safety and encourage more families to use the park.  

The majority of parks in Birmingham already have floodlights installed, allowing the local community to benefit from use of their green spaces at all times of the day. As obesity is often linked to economic deprivation, we would like to encourage children in the Sparkbrook area to get more exercise, as it has one of the highest childhood obesity rates in the city, with over 40% of 11-year-olds being classed as overweight.

While floodlights are expensive, the wider economic benefits of parks to Birmingham outweighs the initial cost, with the annual net benefit of parks to Birmingham being £600 million. Increasing public use of parks is hugely beneficial to wider society, for example, by reducing pressure on the NHS as parks produce £192 million in health benefits alone.

It would be possible to minimise the environmental impact in a number of ways - for example, by using LED floodlights, which require only 20% of the energy typically used by halogen lighting. They are also an extremely sustainable form of lighting as their bulbs can last for approximately 50,000 hours and they can be powered using solar energy, as has been successfully tried in other parts of the city. They can be bought for only a fraction of the cost of other forms of lighting and are also much cheaper to run and maintain. To avoid necessary light pollution, they only need to be turned on for a few hours every night in the winter months to allow children to make use of the park after school when it may already be getting dark.

Due to the pandemic, outdoor space has never been more important. Every child should have access to a safe, outdoor space to exercise. Please sign to petition Birmingham City Council to install floodlights in Larches Park in Sparkbrook and make Birmingham a safer and healthier place.