Six Leighton-Linslade parks hold a 2026 Green Flag, more than any other council in the district. The full list, checked against Keep Britain Tidy's register.
Six parks and open spaces run by Leighton-Linslade Town Council hold a Green Flag Award this year, more than any other council in Central Bedfordshire. The town council counts nine awards in total across the scheme’s three categories, and the national winners list published by Keep Britain Tidy bears that out. (2026 UK winners list, Green Flag Award)
The awards were announced on 14 July, in the scheme’s 30th anniversary year. 2,391 UK sites won one. (Keep Britain Tidy, 14 July 2026)
The six with a Green Flag
The Green Flag Award proper is judged against criteria covering accessibility, maintenance, environmental management, safety, biodiversity and community involvement. The Leighton-Linslade winners are:
- Pages Park, Billington Road, which shares its name with the Leighton Buzzard Railway’s Page’s Park terminus
- Parson’s Close Recreation Ground, the town’s main park
- Linslade Recreation Ground
- Linslade Memorial Playing Fields and Garden of Remembrance
- Vandyke Road Cemetery
- Peace Meadow
Peace Meadow is the new one. The town council says the other five were retained. (Leighton-Linslade Town Council)
The other three awards, and who actually holds two of them
Vandyke Road Cemetery also has Green Heritage Site Accreditation, which recognises the historic interest of a site rather than its upkeep. Only one other place in Central Bedfordshire has it: Priory Gardens in Dunstable.
The remaining two are Green Flag Community Awards, the category for spaces run largely by volunteers. The town council lists them as Pages Park Community Garden and Linslade Recreation Ground Community Garden. On Keep Britain Tidy’s own register they appear under different names, Page Park in Bloom and Linslade Rec Ground in Bloom, and the managing organisation recorded against both is not the council. It is Leighton and Linslade in Bloom Volunteers.
That is worth saying plainly. Two of the town’s nine awards are registered nationally in the name of the volunteer group that tends those gardens.
A third community award in the town is not in the council’s count at all. Linslade Wood won one, held jointly by Central Bedfordshire Council and the Friends of Linslade Woods Group.
How the district compares
Fifteen sites in Central Bedfordshire hold a full Green Flag this year. Leighton-Linslade has six of them. Dunstable Town Council has four: Bennett Memorial Recreation Ground, Dunstable Cemetery, Grove House Gardens and Priory Gardens. Houghton Regis Town Council has two, Houghton Hall Park and The Village Green. Ampthill Town Council has Ampthill Great Park, Stotfold Town Council has Stotfold Cemetery, and the Forest of Marston Vale Trust has the Millennium Country Park.
Four more sites in the district hold Community Awards:
- Flitton Moor, run by Central Bedfordshire Council
- Windsor Drive Recreation Ground, Houghton Regis
- Bellcote Meadow Millennium Green, Shefford
- Stotfold Water Mill Local Nature Reserve
Some of the district’s larger towns are missing from the 2026 list entirely. Biggleswade, Sandy, Flitwick, Potton, Arlesey and Toddington have no site on it in any category.
What it means for you
A Green Flag is not a grant and it does not come with money. It is an annual judged standard, so a site has to reapply and be assessed each year, which is why the council distinguishes between the five it retained and the four it gained. The flags themselves fly at the sites.
The practical use of the list is that it tells you which nearby spaces are being actively managed to a published standard. All six are free to enter. Parson’s Close has the Splash and Play area, an accessible adventure playground and a café. It is also where the town council’s summer events run. The last of them is Last Night of the Proms and Films in the Park on Saturday 12 September, free to attend, with films from 12pm and music from 7pm. (Leighton-Linslade Town Council)
If you want to see what the judges are marking against, Keep Britain Tidy publishes the criteria and the full 2,391-site winners list on its own site. More local days out are in our guide to things to do in Leighton Buzzard, and the Page’s Park terminus mentioned above is currently running diesel rather than steam because of the dry weather.
Have your say