GCV Green Network
Connecting Our Quality Spaces

For a very significant proportion of residents across the GCV region shared backcourts are their closest access to a greenspace. Around 70% of Glasgow’s population lives in tenements with shared backcourts.

Unfortunately for many their backcourts are poorly managed and maintained, making them effectively unusable for many of the uses they were originally intended to fulfil such as:

• Children’s play
• Growing fruit and vegetables
• Drying washing
• Socialising with neighbours

Backcourts are poorly maintained for several key reasons , These include:

• Failed management arrangements, often because of different tenures within a single tenement stair
• Difficulty in collecting management fees from tenants
• Transient tenants with no ownership of the space
• Poor quality design
• Lack of support for tenants

Together these factors can deprive residents of a safe, local space where they can enjoy activities which provide many social and health benefits.

 

 

The Green Network

The Partnership’s vision is that the people in the GCV region can enjoy a high quality Green Network from their doorstep through the urban conurbation to the wider countryside. Backcourts, for many people, are a crucial ‘first step’ into that network.

The Partnership commissioned the Sustainable Backcourts study to investigate the quality of backcourts across the GCV, the range of management arrangements being used and to identify what works, what doesn’t and why.  This was supported by resident consultation to understand what they wanted from their backcourts and the level of involvement they would like to have in its management.  The study developed recommendations to address the identified problems in five key areas:

• Neighbourhood scale social enterprises
• Promotion of best practice among professionals
• Awareness and aspiration raising campaign for residents
• Provide support for residents
• Promote best practice in community gardening

The Partnership aims to explore, with partners, ways in which the recommendations within the study can be progressed.

 

For more detailed information download the full Sustainable Management of Backcourts study from the right hand column.