Introduction
The GiGL Open Space Friends Group subset provides locations and boundaries for selected open space sites in Greater London.
The chosen sites represent sites that have established Friends Groups in Greater London and are therefore important to local communities, even if they may not be accessible open spaces, or don’t typically function as destinations for leisure, activities and community engagement*.
Friends Groups are groups of interested local people who come together to protect, enhance and improve their local open space or spaces.
The dataset has been created by Greenspace Information for Greater London CIC (GiGL). As London’s Environmental Records Centre, GiGL mobilises, curates and shares data that underpin our knowledge of London’s natural environment. We provide impartial evidence to support informed discussion and decision making in policy and practice.
GiGL maps under licence from the Greater London Authority.
*Publicly accessible sites for leisure, activities and community engagement can be found in GiGL's Spaces to Visit dataset
Description
This dataset is a sub-set of the GiGL Open Space dataset, the most comprehensive dataset available of open spaces in London. Sites are selected for inclusion in the Friends Group subset based on whether there is a friends group recorded for the site in the Open Space dataset.
The dataset is a mapped Geographic Information System (GIS) polygon dataset where one polygon (or multi-polygon) represents one space. As well as site boundaries, the dataset includes information about a site’s name, size, access and type (e.g. park, playing field etc.) and the name and/or web address of the site’s friends group.
GiGL developed the dataset to support anyone who is interested in identifying sites in London with friends groups - including friends groups and other community groups, web and app developers, policy makers and researchers - with an open licence data source. More detailed and extensive data are available under GiGL data use licences for GIGL partners, researchers and students. Information services are also available for ecological consultants, biological recorders, community groups and members of the public – please see www.gigl.org.uk for more information.
The dataset is updated on a quarterly basis. If you have questions about this dataset please contact GiGL’s Database Officer.
Data sources
The boundaries and information in this dataset are a combination of data collected during the London Survey Method habitat and open space survey programme (1986 – 2008) and information provided to GiGL from other sources since. These sources include London borough surveys, land use datasets, volunteer surveys, feedback from the public, park friends’ groups, and updates made as part of GiGL’s on-going data validation and verification process.
This is a preliminary version of the dataset as there is currently low coverage of friends groups in GiGL’s Open Space database. We are continually working on updating and improving this dataset. If you have any additional information or corrections for sites included in GiGL’s Friends Group subset please contact GiGL’s Database Officer.
NOTE: The dataset contains OS data © Crown copyright and database rights 2024. The site boundaries are based on Ordnance Survey mapping, and the data are published under Ordnance Survey's 'presumption to publish'. When using these data please acknowledge GiGL and Ordnance Survey as the source of the information using the following citation:
‘Dataset created by Greenspace Information for Greater London CIC (GiGL), 2024 – Contains Ordnance Survey and public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0 ’
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