Play England’s Executive Director gives oral evidence to CMS Select Committee inquiry
Why this matters for playworkers and adventure playgrounds
On 2 September 2025, Play England gave oral evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee’s inquiry into the State of Play. This was a landmark moment for the play sector. For the first time in many years, Parliament examined the condition of children’s play in England, including the decline of adventure playgrounds, the erosion of staffed play provision, and the collapse of playwork.
Our Executive Director, Eugene Minogue, provided evidence to the Committee, speaking directly to the issues raised daily by playworkers, play associations, and adventure playgrounds across the country. The message was clear: children are losing the time, space, acceptance and freedom they need to play, and the people who support them are doing so in an environment with diminishing resources, recognition, and structural backing.
Putting adventure playgrounds on the parliamentary agenda
During the session, Play England set out the national reality facing adventure playgrounds:
England has lost a significant number of adventure playgrounds since 1980
There is no national monitoring or long-term investment framework
Local cuts and organisational churn have left many provision types vulnerable
Frontline playwork expertise is undervalued and poorly understood in national policy
We confirmed that Play England will update national adventure playground data in 2026, building on our previous research and the University of Sheffield’s work on England's 34,000 playgrounds. This will support local and national campaigning, strategic planning, and investment cases. This work is central to our role in providing authoritative national evidence for the sector.
Championing playworkers as a skilled profession
Play England used the session to highlight the long-term consequences of the collapse of Level 2 and Level 3 playwork qualifications, the loss of clear CPD pathways, and the impact this has on quality, safety and community resilience. We emphasised that:
Playwork is a skilled, relational practice with a clear evidence base
Workforce decline is a systemic failure, not an inevitability
England needs an active pipeline of trained, confident playworkers
Adventure playgrounds cannot thrive without a recognised, respected and properly supported workforce
This aligns directly with the Skills priority set out in It All Starts with Play! which commits Play England to rebuilding the foundations of a national playwork profession. At national level, we are already driving this through the UK Playwork National Occupational Standards (NOS) refresh, ensuring the NOS reflect contemporary practice, children’s rights, and the realities of staffed play provision in 2025 and beyond.
These standards will underpin future qualifications, training pathways and competency frameworks. They also provide an essential foundation for local authorities commissioning high-quality play provision and for adventure playgrounds seeking to strengthen and evidence their practice.
Our oral evidence made clear that the challenges playworkers describe every day are structural, not individual: a fragmented system, diminishing training routes, and a lack of national recognition for the depth of their practice. Play England will continue to address these issues nationally so that playworkers have the support, professional pathways and policy environment they deserve.
This is core to Play England’s long-term leadership role: rebuilding a national system that values, trains and sustains the playwork profession.
Risk, freedom and the right to play
We highlighted the growing imbalance between safety cultures and children’s developmental need for challenge and independence. Our evidence drew on ISO 4980 and set out the need for proportionate, risk-benefit–based thinking in all decision-making affecting children’s play.
We made the point clearly: the purpose of play is not to remove all risk, but to ensure children have environments that support them to navigate it safely.
Drive towards Play Sufficiency
Play England also used the evidence session to restate the national case for Play Sufficiency. Dr Naomi Lott’s STAR framework (Space, Time, Acceptance, Rights) provided the Committee with a coherent model for understanding what children need and what a national system must deliver.
This argument has already shaped parliamentary scrutiny. Following the Committee’s session on 2 September, Natasha Irons MP cited Eugene Minogue’s evidence directly, during the Committee’s session with the Secretary of State on 10 September referencing his statement that “children make up 20% of our population, but 100% of our future.” This placed the sector’s concerns firmly into ministerial accountability and demonstrated the immediate impact of Play England’s evidence.
Children need play. Communities need staffed play provision. And playworkers need a national system that recognises and supports their work. Play England will continue to ensure these issues remain at the heart of political and public debate.
Watch the full evidence session on Parliament’s website or read the full transcript here.
#ItAllStartsWithPlay! #NationalPlayStrategy #PlaySufficency #AdventurePlaygrounds #Playwork