Our News Category: Play news

There are around 900 parks friends groups in London involving 100,000 volunteers. Many are instrumental in driving forward improvements to play facilities but some boroughs are missing out according to a CPRE London report.

CPRE London runs the GoParksLondon project and works with the London Friends of Green Spaces Network (LFGN) to support London’s park friends groups. It has recently published a report looking at which London boroughs benefit most from their work. The report estimates that friends volunteers contribute around 900,000 hours (equivalent to 30 people working eight hours a day for ten years!), acknowledging: “These groups make an enormous contribution to the maintenance and improvement of London’s parks, and to ensuring health and wellbeing benefits are maximised.”

But some boroughs are better served than others, the report finds. Nine London boroughs have 40 or more friends groups; Southwark and Richmond are top with 80 and 77 groups respectively. Five boroughs have six or fewer groups: Barking & Dagenham, Bexley, Hillingdon, Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster.

The report includes information from a 2021 survey showing that over 90 per cent of friends groups do volunteering and run small events; 84 per cent have applied for grants to make improvements. Although in terms of physical improvements, planting is top of the priority list for most groups, playgrounds and play spaces were frequently mentioned by survey participants as top achievements.

You can view the full report here

London Play was sad to hear of the death earlier this year of Donne Buck, playworker, campaigner and archivist of children’s play.

Donne Buck was a playleader and campaigner for children’s right to play for over six decades. A significant figure in the history of play, in his long career Donne established and ran adventure playgrounds in London, Stevenage and Peterborough.

Within a year of arriving from New Zealand in the 1950s, Buck started working at the very first adventure playground in Hackney – based on a bomb-site in Shoreditch – and never looked back. Over the following six decades he captured images of the inner-city playgrounds he worked in, beginning with post-war play spaces, and this gradually evolved into an internationally significant collection of photographs, housed since 2015 in the V&A Museum of Childhood archive.

He was an active campaigner for children’s rights and promoted the importance of play in education and social development, working with central government, local councils and international agencies.

 “Children will always play – they played in the death camps, now they play in refugee camps, they’ll play wherever they are – but it’s the quality of play that really affects whether it develops them to their full potential or not. That’s what people like me are engaged in – trying to make sure that children play, and when they play, they get the most out of it.”

Donne Buck

All of us at London Play extend our sympathies to Donne’s widow Jane. An article about Donne in his local paper is here.

London Play is one of a coalition of children’s charities calling on the government to urgently put children at the heart of its agenda, following a critical United Nations report on children’s rights in the UK.

The report of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child notes some areas of progress from their 2016 report, including action to outlaw child marriage, the independent review of children’s social care and the commitment to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.

But it also highlights a wide range of issues that are detrimentally impacting children, including high numbers of children living in poverty, long waiting lists for children seeking mental health services, and the high prevalence of domestic abuse, sexual exploitation, and other forms of violence against children.

In relation to play, the committee made four recommendations to ensure that children in the UK can exercise their right and need to play, enshrined in Article 31 of the UNCRC. Chief among these was that the UK government should implement a strategy, with sufficient resources, aimed at ensuring children’s right to rest, leisure and recreation, including free outdoor play.

The committee also recommended that children’s right to play should be integrated into school curricula; and that children should have “sufficient time to engage in play and recreational activities that are inclusive and age-appropriate.” This reflects concerns raised by London Play and 96 other charities in a report submitted to the committee in advance of the review, which highlighted the increasingly restrictive school curriculum limiting play opportunities for children; as well as shrinking playtimes and the widespread practice of withdrawing play as punishment in schools.

The four recommendations on play are in full:

Rest, leisure, recreation and cultural and artistic activities

48. The Committee recommends that the State party:

(a) Develop a strategy, with sufficient resources, aimed at ensuring children’s right to rest, leisure and recreation, including free outdoor play;
(b) Integrate children’s right to play into school curricula and ensure that children have sufficient time to engage in play and recreational activities that are inclusive and age-appropriate;
(c) Strengthen measures to ensure that all children, including children with disabilities, young children, children in rural areas and children with disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, have access to accessible and safe public outdoor play spaces;
(d) Involve children in decisions regarding urban-planning processes, including public transportation, and in the development of spaces for children to play.

The full report of the UNCRC Committee is here.

New Scottish planning rules mark a significant step towards incorporating children’s right to play into law and practice – leaving England lagging behind

A new ‘play sufficiency duty’ requiring councils to provide an assessment of the quality, quantity and accessibility of formal and informal play spaces is to come into effect in Scotland this month.

An equivalent duty has been in place in Wales for over a decade, but no such requirements apply to councils in England.  The Town and Country Planning (Play Sufficiency Assessment) (Scotland) Regulations 2023 come into effect on 19 May and will require councils to produce a report and maps, as well as consult with children, parents and carers to do this.

Meanwhile Aberdeen Live reports that under the new fourth National Planning Framework, local authorities will also be encouraged to support applications for the development of play spaces, parks and sports facilities. “The changes aim to provide more opportunities for outdoor activity and help implement a commitment to incorporate children and young people’s rights into Scottish law and practice.” Read more here.

London residents are calling the police on neighbours who allow their children to play out, according to a Guardian survey.

“Do your children face problems playing outside?”

The Guardian invited responses to this question from its readers and among the hundreds of replies “a number of people reported warnings from authorities or threats from neighbours.”

In Waltham Forest one parent received repeated council warnings and a visit from the police for allowing her children to play in space designed as a low traffic “parklet” by the council. In a video promoting the design – which won an environmental award last year – children are shown playing in the space. In a statement Cllr Khevyn Limbajee, the cabinet member for community safety, pointed to nearby parks that were available and said: “Everyone deserves to expect peace and quiet in their homes, especially late in the evening. We will work to balance the right for children to play in their neighbourhood with the right for others to feel safe and comfortable in their own home.”

In Newham, east London, Ilona Saber said she faced opposition from neighbours and authority figures for allowing her young son to play on their quiet road while keeping an eye on him from home.

“Over the past couple of years I have had police knock on my door about reports my young son was in danger because he was playing near the house and then last summer Newham council street enforcement officers brought my son to my door because they saw him playing with friends near our house and were concerned.”

She said when she tried to bring a safe play area to an unused space on the street, neighbours fought to stop it. “I got council funding for some small play equipment for a little unused corner on our road. It was all ready to go. But neighbours wrote to our MP saying it would disturb their peace and they found a procedural issue with the consultation despite our efforts and the councils to involve people. Sadly they were able to stop it.”

For the full story visit the Guardian website.

A Guardian report highlights that families are being pushed out of central London, hollowing out the inner city and leaving both inner and outer boroughs struggling to adapt to huge changes in their demographics.

In inner London, a city without children is not some kind of dystopia but the new reality as communities are hollowed out

Something strange is happening in the heart of London, something an entire generation has never witnessed. You see it by piecing together the news ignored as too small by the big media and reported only by the local journalists covering their particular boroughs. So try these snippets.

Last week, Lambeth announced that a secondary school founded in 1685 will close for good this summer, with its students farmed out elsewhere. In Camden, St Michael’s primary will not even make the end of the school year – it closes this month, the fourth in the borough to go since 2019. Days before the Easter holiday, Hackney warned that two of its primaries are likely to fold and another four may have to merge to survive. Neighbouring Islington is considering closures, while Southwark believes 16 primaries are at risk.

This is a huge story, not only about marooned children and panicked parents, or redundant teachers and struggling councils, but the very future of our major cities. These schools are not shutting because they are bad, but because inner London no longer has enough children to fill them. The dead centre of Britain’s political and economic powerhouse is driving out families – and its education system is now taking an almighty hit. Hackney, for instance, has 589 fewer kids in reception today than it did in 2014, a shortfall equivalent to about 20 vacant classrooms. Since schools mainly receive cash per pupil, empty desks mean debts, and debts force closures.

Once a primary or secondary school locks its gates, it’s gone for good. That handsome redbrick shell is gavelled off, to be reincarnated as splendid flats for sub-nuclear households, and the only reminder of a proud state institution is the service charge on that private finance initiative wing – which will be levied long, long after you and I have ascended to the great common room in the sky.

A city without children is not some dystopia; it is the new reality. At the Centre for London, senior researcher Jon Tabbush has analysed 20 years of census results, and found families with kids have gone missing across the centre of London. Since 2001, Lambeth has seen a 10% drop in households with at least one school-age child; in Southwark it’s 11%. Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Islington: they are all losing young families.

For the full story go to the Guardian website.