The Royal Parks Visitor Research

Visitors to London’s eight Royal Parks gave extremely positive ratings of the parks in survey waves conducted in 2017-2018. Over nine in ten visitors (96%) rated the overall quality of the park they were in as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’.

Overall, Regents Park and Primrose Hill were rated as ‘excellent’ by a larger proportion of visitors than in any other park in 2017-2018 (71%).

Frequent visitors and those living locally to the parks were more likely to give an ‘excellent’ rating than visitors overall. Sixty-six percent of frequent visitors, and 72% of visitors living within half a mile of the park they were in, rated it as ‘excellent’ (compared to 58% of all visitors giving an ‘excellent’ rating).

Over nine in ten visitors rated the quality of the natural environment in the park they were in as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ (94%), and a similar proportion said the same for the upkeep of the park (93%). Only three in five visitors gave a positive rating of the overall quality of toilets (60% rated this as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’). 

Visitors feel safe in the parks – nearly all said they feel ‘very’ or ‘quite’ safe (99%). Among the groups most likely to feel ‘very safe’ are frequent visitors (71%) and those living within half a mile (74%) of the park.

• Royal Parks Press Release

Technical note

• Ipsos interviewed 2787 visitors across the Royal Parks (c.348 per park) across three survey waves in 2017 – 2018.
• Wave 1 took place between 1 August and 5 September 2017; Wave 2 between 1 May and 3 June 2018; and, Wave 3 between 1 August and 10 September 2018.
• Interviews were conducted face-to-face, and using a 'random stop' technique using pre-defined interview points.
• Data are weighted using a park equalisation weight.
• Results are based upon all completed interviews unless otherwise stated. Answers with a base size lower than 100 should be treated with caution. Where figures do not add up to 100%, this is the result of computer rounding or multiple responses.
• An asterisk indicates a score less than 0.5%, but greater than zero.