OPEN LETTER - Dear Prime Minister: Let’s finish what we started!
Play England calls on Prime Minister Andy Burnham to bring back the National Play Strategy he helped launch in 2008 and restore the conditions for a play-based childhood.
OPEN LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER
20 July 2026
Dear Andy,
Congratulations on becoming Prime Minister.
In 2008, you quite literally swung into action at an adventure playground to launch England’s first and only National Play Strategy. The photographs captured the moment perfectly: Ministers on a rope swing, making the serious point that play matters.
Backed by £235 million, the strategy set out what kind of country England wanted to be for its children. It promised thousands of new and improved play spaces, investment in adventure playgrounds and playworkers, and a stronger place for children in planning, schools, housing and public space.
At its heart was something simple but important: children need time, space, opportunity and freedom to play.
You know this history because you helped create it. You understand what that national commitment meant, what it began to achieve and what was lost when it was abandoned in 2010. Eighteen years have now passed since the strategy was launched. That’s an entire childhood, from birth to adulthood, without a national commitment to play.
Since then, hundreds of playgrounds have closed. Adventure playgrounds and play services have disappeared. Traffic, shrinking public space, risk aversion and the rise of a phone-based childhood have steadily reduced children’s freedom and independence.
Children are spending less time outside, less time with friends and less time playing. Government is rightly acting to protect children from addictive social media. But reducing a phone-based childhood is only half the answer.
We must also restore the conditions for a play-based childhood. Children need places to go, friends to meet, things to make, risks to judge and communities in which they feel accepted and welcome. They need the freedom to experience childhood, like we did.
Prime Minister, this is unfinished business. Play England is asking your Government to:
develop a new, cross-government National Play Strategy for England
underpin it with Play Sufficiency legislation, so that every community must assess and secure enough time, space, opportunity and freedom for children to play
back it with sustained investment of £125 million per year – that’s just 20p per child, per week!
This is a modest commitment compared with the costs of poor physical and mental health, inactivity, loneliness and lost childhood.
The recent £18 million Playground Fund has begun to rebuild what was lost. It should now form part of something bigger: a long-term commitment to children’s streets, schools, parks, playgrounds, adventure playgrounds and wider public spaces.
England does not need to start again. The foundations were laid in 2008. The evidence has grown. The sector is ready. The APPG on Play has been rebuilt, and parliamentary support has been growing. What has been missing is national leadership.
As Prime Minister, you can provide that leadership. You can finish what we started. It is time to give children their childhood back, and it all starts with play!
Eugene Minogue
Executive Director