The Council’s Economy and Culture Scrutiny committee has undertaken an inquiry into a new playground strategy which aims to help improve play areas around the city.
As part of the work the Councillors teamed up with Cardiff Play Council – a group of children and young people from local play centres – to develop a child friendly survey.
The scrutiny committee wanted to discover whether the professional assessment of play areas was shared by the young people who used them.
The survey, which was distributed among primary schools, play centres, youth outreach workers and a number of different youth projects across the city, asked children between six and 12 a range of questions about the play areas they use.
The overall response was very positive with two thirds of respondents rating them either good or brilliant, with favourite pieces of equipment being swings, slides, football equipment and climbing equipment. Council play centres and Victoria Park had the highest ratings of individual play areas.
The most common complaint about playgrounds was that there were not enough things to play on but this was only mentioned by one third of respondents. Only 12 per cent of respondents felt unsafe in their play area.
There were mixed feelings about the cleanliness of play areas with 44 per cent saying that their play area was clean only some of the time.
The gypsy and traveller respondents were very unhappy that there was no play area or equipment near their Shire Newton site.
The Economy and Culture Scrutiny committee inquiry used the survey to help them get a real understanding of what children think of their playgrounds and the results helped Councillors to develop recommendations for improvement.
Councillor Mohammed-Sarul Islam, who is the chair of the Economy and Culture scrutiny committee, said “It is widely acknowledged that play is essential to every area of children’s development and to their health, well-being and happiness. It therefore has been very important for us to hear and learn from our young people about what they think of the playgrounds we have and the equipment within them.
“It is very important that the new playground strategy incorporates the views of children who use them. What we have learnt will help shape a number of recommendations that the committee will be putting to the Executive for approval.”
