Children's Play initiative

The Children's Play initiative is a strategic programme for children's play, funded by the Big Lottery Fund.

£155 million was committed to the programme in 2006 to develop free play opportunities in the areas of greatest need, as well as a regional support and development infrastructure and support for innovation.

The Children's Play initiative is based on the recommendations of the national play review chaired by Frank Dobson MP, published in 2004 as Getting Serious About Play. The initiative is made up of three elements:

1. Children's Play programme
£124 million was allocated to local authorities across England on the basis of size and need, to provide free, local and inclusive play opportunities. Local authorities were invited to work with partners to develop a play strategy and portfolio of projects as the basis for an application for their allocated sum.

2. Playful Ideas programme
£16 million was made available on an open bidding basis for innovative projects in planning, design or delivery of free play opportunities. The voluntary and community sector was particularly encouraged to apply.

3. Regional support and development programme
£15million has been awarded to NCB to establish Play England.

Play England provided information to support applications to both of these programmes and offers ongoing guidance, advice and enabling services to local authority play partnerships working to deliver their play strategies for the main Children's Play programme. The good practice basis for this advice is contained in Planning for Play: guidance on the development and implementation of a local play strategy.

Note: Guidance entitled Embedding the Play Strategy, developed by Play England and published by DCSF in 2010, has updated Planning for Play, taking into consideration the new funding and wider ambitions of the government’s national Play Strategy.

The Children's Play programme and the Playful Ideas programme opened to applications in March 2006 and first grants were announced in autumn 2006. There were four deadlines for the submission of applications for the Children's Play programme: July 2006, November 2006, March 2007 and September 2007. Applications for the Playful Ideas programme were open until the end of December 2007.

For more information about both the Children's Play programme and the Playful Ideas programme, visit the Big Lottery Fund website.