The Royal Parks cover 5000 acres of parkland and provide the setting for Kensington and Buckingham Palaces, London Zoo, and the Albert Memorial. They compromise Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Regents Park, St James’ Park, Richmond Park, Green Park and Bushy Park.

In 1992 Sir Terry Farrell joined the Royal Parks Review Group, a group set up in with the remit of producing a fundamental change and improvement in the Royal Parks and how they were run, aiming for excellence in the way they were kept, quality in what the parks offered, and better management and value for money. Sir Terry Farrell’s particular remit was to look at the large-scale design of landscape and buildings together, and his conclusions were published in 1996.

A core finding was that in the transition from private royal space to public space, the Royal Parks had suffered an identity crisis which benefited neither the Royal family nor the public. He proposed that whilst the royal family did not enjoy them as they used to do, neither did the populace experience them in their full splendour either. His recommendations addressed the way that the public were often funnelled through side entrances and diverted away from original grand entrances and grand routes. He argued that there was poor access in general from the surrounding roads, and a dominance of cars over pedestrian access. Finally, the clumsy dividing of public and private space resulted in the blocking of original vistas and schemes thereby diminishing the splendour of the original design.