Should we charge children to play in Adventure Playgrounds?

trinidadone

Hello all,

In todays news, the London Borough of Wandworth want to introduce a charge £2.50 at weekends. The charge is for children to free play at the council maintained adventure playground in Battersea Park, London from September 2011.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-13391175

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_9480000/newsid_9484800/9484880.stm

Conservative controlled Wandworth council claims, it costs £220.000 a year to maintain the adventure playground each year. The playground is used by 50% of families outside of the borough at weekend.

A spokesman for wandworth said "equipment at the park is "sophisticated and elaborate" and includes zip wires, climbing walls and large wooden balancing structures"

Ken Livingstone said: "I believe London's parks and playgrounds should be free for London's families and I am deeply concerned at this attempt to turn publicly-funded playgrounds into areas which only the rich and privileged can enjoy."

Should children / young people be charged to play?

mrcow

It's almost like.....you start working for a council and you lose all sense of proportionailty/reality/common sense.

Do they put something in the coffee?

WhiteHorse

They have already been paid for through the Council Tax.

Dave_C_2

There are some times when I'm really, really glad that I don't live in that London. Come on guys move to the country, the air is cleaner, the cost of living is much cheaper - and the playgrounds are free!

Dave

trinidadone

LOL, most Adventure Playgrounds are built on rough land, or in parks fenced off. I feel for the playworkers who will have to ask children entry money. years ago, cildren would ay "going over the adventure mum" now it will be "go to the park instead"

trumpton

The money would have been better spent building more, but smaller, traditional playgrounds that are free and don't need supervision. It shouldn't have been built in the first place imo. £2.50 is actually quite a lot to pay if you have 2 or 3 kids.

ellay864

I listened to the discussion about this on Jeremy Vine today. As a mum who hates seeing kids spend all their time stuck on PCs etc I love the idea that they can get outside and play in parks for free. But playing devil's advocate here, it occurred to me that nobody bats an eyelid about paying a couple of quid to go onto playbarns. It seems that this park offers a lot more than a conventional free park where you might find slides, swings, climbing frames, but not zip wires and climbing walls. Personally I'd rather pay for that sort of thing, than for a few plastic obstacles and a ball pit (weather permitting of course!)

vixki

It's awful that kids have to pay to use playgrounds, but the thing is, they DO cost an awful lot of money! The new government has completely cut funding for parks/playgrounds, so all money has to be raised somehow. My village has been trying to raise money for a park and it's only a very small one, yet is costing £100,000 which is an awful lot to raise. We got most of our money from the Lottery but even they're cutting back on funding parks.
So while charging each child £2.50 is not a good thing, be aware that these parks do cost thousands per year to maintain (though I wouldn't have thought it would be £220,000) and increasingly you have to pay for health and safety checks to make sure everything is safer than safe.

-not defending the charge at all though-

blue_monkey_2

The thing is, this is not a traditional playground, this is a specialised playground that needs supervision. I am sure there must be other playgrounds in the area.

People ar emore thanhappy to pay £25 a time to go to Go Ape or to pay £6 each to get into a soft play centre.

Our local leisure centre charges for swimming and a fitness pass, they also have a boating lake and lcimbing wall, both of which have to be paid for. As does fishing on the lake. Why should they not charge for specialised play parks too? This is not a 'normal park' this is a specialised adventure playpark. £2.5o is cheap!! There must be free parks elsewhere so go to those.

pinkshoes

My first thoughts were "No way, we already pay through council tax", but having now read the article, this appears to be no ordinary park, and is actually quite an elaborate one.

A presume a massive chunk of the £220k will be paying for staff to supervise, so I do see why they want to charge.

An alternative would be to have a a voluntary group of parents to staff the park, each doing a couple of hours a week, then all of their own children can play for free. Kids whose parents don't volunteer, or who live outside the borough could pay say £1.

Laz123

pinkshoes wrote: »

My first thoughts were "No way, we already pay through council tax", but having now read the article, this appears to be no ordinary park, and is actually quite an elaborate one.

A presume a massive chunk of the £220k will be paying for staff to supervise, so I do see why they want to charge.

An alternative would be to have a a voluntary group of parents to staff the park, each doing a couple of hours a week, then all of their own children can play for free. Kids whose parents don't volunteer, or who live outside the borough could pay say £1.

That's a good idea but perhaps hard to put into practise. Another idea would be for residents to pay a nominal fee for an annual permit. That way non-residents would have to pay the £2.50 fee per child but not residents' kids.