Charities running staffed adventure playgrounds say they are fighting “tooth and nail” to stay open for children and their families.
But operators of some of the specialised spaces, often based in lower-income communities, are fearful for the future due to financial pressures and funding.
At The Big Swing Adventure Playground in Bradford, six-year-old Benny is busy scaling a wooden fort before throwing himself on to a pile of crash mats below.
Watching on his dad, Bledar, says “there should be more places like this” for children, as Benny runs back to tell him he has just jumped off “the highest level”.
But, for many playgrounds like this one – which also provides arts and crafts, water areas and sand pits – funding is getting harder to secure, along with the rising cost of running the site.
The government has committed £18m through its Playground Fund, external to “reopen lost play spaces” as well as protecting playgrounds through its planning rules.
While welcome, Play Bradford, which runs The Big Swing, wants them to go further by securing those community hubs with a focus on play.
Th Big Swing serves around 6,000 children a year and costs about £230,000 to run annually.
The funding it receives varies each year, depending on the type of grants available and the outreach projects it runs, in addition to the playground costs.
Staff like Victoria Lawford are worried that, unless they can get hold of extra funding to pay playworker’s wages, they won’t be open by next summer.
“We have 30 or 40 children coming here every session,” she says.
“Where are they going to end up if we close? They might end up just wandering round the streets, getting into mischief.”
