The Play England - South West team promotes and raises awareness of the importance of free play and help to create a lasting support structure for play providers in the region.
The South West section of this website features regional news, events, the PlayToday regional update, weblinks, and details of how to contact us.
In 2006 the former Children's Play Council (CPC), part of the National Children's Bureau (NCB), was awarded the grant to deliver the Play England project to help local agencies in planning for play across their area by setting up a national support and development infrastructure across the regions.
In this phase of work our regional activity focussed on supporting local authority areas to develop play strategies as part of their bid for funding from the Big Lottery Fund (BIG) Children’s Play programme.
A massive £10m was secured for a huge range of playful projects and an additional £1.9m came into the region through BIG’s Playful Ideas programme.
In 2008, the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) appointed Play England to help deliver the government’s vision for the future of play.
In this new phase of our work, Play England - South West supports and challenges local authorities receiving funding under the government’s new play pathfinder and playbuilder programmes which form part of The Children’s Plan.
A number of areas in the South West have been chosen as play pathfinder and playbuilder authorities, and therefore will receive additional government funding to develop and improve play opportunities.
In 2008, Bristol and Bath and North East Somerset were selected as play pathfinders. They each received around £2m capital funding to develop public playgrounds and play spaces, plus significant revenue funding. These play pathfinders worked with children, young people and their communities to develop innovative play sites with challenging equipment and natural landscapes, which give all children the opportunity to play actively outdoors. The play sites are also accessible for disabled children.
The bids included plans for building new staffed adventure playgrounds, with indoor and outdoor facilities, specifically aimed at improving play opportunities for 8- to13-year-olds where they currently lack places to go and things to do, and often in disadvantaged areas.
In addition, Cornwall, Plymouth and Somerset became playbuilders and received capital funding of approximately £1m to develop public play areas, with the first allocations starting April 2008.
A second round of play pathfinder bidding took place autumn 2008 and Cornwall became a play pathfinder authority. The following became Wave 2 play pathfinder authorities:
In order to support playbuilder and play pathfinder local authorities, we host quarterly regional network meetings. Details of these can be found on our regional events page.
In addition, we will continue to work with our regional partners including those from the world of forestry, health, play, greenspaces and extended schools. We have been working closely with Playwork Partnerships which is the delivery partner for Play Shaper.
We will continue to listen to your feedback and run a series of events and seminars on topics that you request.
For more information please contact the South West office.
