There's good news and bad news in the Scottish Household Survey, published on 11 September: more Scots are visiting the outdoors at least once a week, but people living in the most deprived areas are still more likely not to make any visits to the outdoors and are less likely to have greenspace within a 5 minute walk of home.

The survey reports that more than half of adults (59%) visited the outdoors at least once a week in the last year, an increase from 52% in 2017. The 2018 figure is the highest percentage observed since the start of the time series in 2012.

The report highlights that adults living in the most deprived areas in Scotland were more likely not to have made any visits to the outdoors in the past 12 months at 18% compared to those in the least deprived areas 5%.

Most adults (65%) lived within a five minute walk of their nearest area of greenspace, a similar proportion to 2017 and 2016. A smaller proportion of adults in deprived areas lived within a five minute walk of their nearest greenspace compared to adults in the least deprived areas (58% compared to 68%).

Questions about people’s satisfaction with greenspace were not asked in the 2018 survey and will next be asked in 2019 and reported in 2020. Previous surveys have found that satisfaction with greenspaces and how frequently they are used also varied with the level of area deprivation with the gap being consistent over time. Between 2013 and 2017, approximately two thirds of adults in the most deprived areas were satisfied with their nearest greenspace compared to four fifths of adults in the least deprived areas. And, just under one third of adults in the most deprived areas did not use their nearest greenspace in the previous 12 months compared to approximately one sixth of adults in the least deprived areas.

Read the full report here and compare with the findings from the 2017 Greenspace Use and Attitude Survey