Children’s Playgrounds

Debate between Melanie Onn and Chris Leslie

Wednesday 21st March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the provision of children's playgrounds.

Looking at the weather outside, I am sure hon. Members will have noticed that spring has now arrived, or is at least a little closer. Parents across the country are now hoping that they can finally get their children outdoors to run around and go to parks with friends, and to burn off some energy on the weekends and in the fantastic lighter evenings, in their local playgrounds, which is the topic of this debate. I am very grateful to have the opportunity to talk about this subject today.

Times are quite tough, as we know, and resources are squeezed. I want to raise in the debate today the pressures on the availability of local outdoor spaces and playground areas, which are declining at an alarming rate.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

On that point, I want to raise the issue of the playground near Strand Street School in the East Marsh area of my constituency. It has fallen into significant disrepair, and a group of local mums, the East Marsh mums, is now pulling together and trying to raise the funds to establish a brand new playground. Seeking those funds is incredibly difficult; they are looking to lots of different community funding pots to try to raise that money. It will take a significant amount of money. Does my hon. Friend agree that the loss of the playground is an enormous loss to the children of the East Marsh area?

[Mr Leslie]

Yes. I know that my hon. Friend is a real campaigner for grassroots neighbourhood issues, and she will know the programme in question more than I do. I will come on to talk about what parents can do when faced with the retreat of the traditions of municipal provision, when they have little choice but to somehow find a voluntary alternative. It is very difficult and resources are quite scarce.

[Mr Leslie]

Indeed I am. One of the great things that we are all very nostalgic about from our own childhoods is communal open spaces, and facilities that are largely taken for granted and rarely discussed. Not just children gain enormously from the opportunity for outdoor exercise and socialisation; new parents get to meet other parents, and playgrounds help reduce isolation. They build new friendship networks for new mums and dads. It is a great watering hole for people to come together, meet and form new bonds in the community, particularly at a big life-changing moment.

Playgrounds are a great British tradition, mostly developed in the 20th century. This year marks the 100th anniversary of Charles Wicksteed’s playground equipment company near Kettering. When I mentioned to my eight-year-old daughter that I was leading this debate today, she encouraged me to call for more bars, because she is such a gymnastics enthusiastic who would go round and round on them all day long if she could, but playgrounds are also about sandboxes, swings, slides, climbing frames and roundabouts, and there are many other fantastic municipal facilities with even more exciting innovations—trampolines, paddling pools and all sorts of fantastic amenities.

[Melanie Onn]

Will my hon. Friend congratulate North East Lincolnshire’s Labour council on introducing a parkour facility at the Duke of York playground area, which introduced playgrounds to a whole new generation of young people? Unfortunately, we have seen that falling into disrepair, even though it was brought in only about four years ago. It was a really exciting initiative and my ten-year-old son absolutely loves playing there.

[Mr Leslie]

There are different fashions and trends in play, particularly in the younger teenage years. Skateboard parks were a particular thing a decade ago and trends change. In Nottingham, in my constituency, a new play area has just been installed in Shipstone Street, and Nottingham is trying its best to roll out more facilities. It has improved 75 play areas, with three more set for improvement works shortly, and the city has 54 Green Flag Awards, the greatest number in the country.

Resources are still an underlying problem. Since 2009, Nottingham has had to cut its parks and open spaces budget by £3 million, with a further £300,000 to be cut in the next financial year. Like a lot of local authorities, it has had to start looking elsewhere to plug that gap, looking for grants from other charities and funding bodies over the past 10 years. That is a story repeated across the country. For example, Knowsley Borough Council has had to make a decision to sell off some parks and green spaces, which is a real shame, as childhood obesity levels are very high in that part of the world. Other local authorities are being forced into similar choices—half of the councils in north-west England, according to a BBC report, are considering selling off parks or finding other organisations to maintain them over the next three years.

Nationally, we are just not replacing playgrounds at the same rate as they are disappearing. Some 92% of park managers report cuts to their budgets over the last three years, and research undertaken by the Association of Play Industries has uncovered a sharp decline in playgrounds across England: 214 playgrounds have been closed, with a further 234 playgrounds earmarked for closure by local authorities. That is 448 playgrounds closed or closing, which is an alarming downward trend in play provision. There is no longer dedicated funding for playgrounds from central Government, or grants from the third sector, so playground provision falls to local authorities, whose budgets are of course squeezed.

Play really does matter and it is worth underlining what to many of us might seem obvious. Playgrounds are one of the best ways of encouraging children to do physical activity. Childhood obesity is at epidemic levels. More than one fifth of reception children are overweight or obese; by year 6 that rises to over a third. Children living in deprived areas are more than twice as likely to be obese than those in more affluent areas. For many children, playgrounds represent the only chance to play outdoors. Children living within 1 km of a playground are five times more likely to be of a healthy weight than children who are not near a playground.

Play is fundamental to the wider wellbeing of children. If play is restricted, that is likely to have a profound effect on physical and mental health, now and into the future. There is a crisis in children’s mental health, with some reports saying that as many as 20% of children have some degree of mental illness and that problem might be rising. Without adequate access to play, children cannot develop the important emotional skills needed to protect them from anxiety and depression. Research from the charity Fields in Trust shows, for the first time at national level, a direct and statistically significant link between the availability of public parks and green spaces and health and wellbeing.

That is why I called this debate today. We must not take playgrounds and play facilities for granted. We have to talk about them. This is an area of policy that could fall between the gaps. It was difficult even to decide whether I should target this debate at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Department for Education, or the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, so this is not owned as much as it should be.

I have four requests of the Minister, and I will be as specific as I can. The first is about resources. I do not like to bang on about money constantly because I know the situation is tight, but we should invest to save. Investing a pound in good play facilities now will yield better returns and savings for the health service and the education system in the long run. We cannot rely on developers’ section 106 contributions for new play facilities. They make a bit of a difference, but only in areas in which development is taking place.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Melanie Onn and Chris Leslie

Committee: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 20th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I know that Ministers are already aware of REACH—the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—but the regulatory compliance of companies such as BASF in my constituency is essential to the continuation of effective trading across borders. I really do not want to see companies moving elsewhere, perhaps where regulations are easier to follow, because we will lose good jobs in research, development and manufacturing, and all in the incredibly important science, technology, engineering and maths sector. Does my hon. Friend agree that our leaving REACH will put that at risk?

[Mr Leslie]

I entirely agree and my hon. Friend is completely correct to stand up for her constituents and local businesses and to make that point, which is too often overlooked. We need mutual recognition arrangements like the REACH regulations. It is often said that big corporations want to get out of such regulations, but in this case they want to stay part of that framework because it allows them to access markets. If we sacrifice that access, they will lose out and jobs will go as a result.

On a related issue, new clause 59 concerns the recognition of professional qualifications throughout the EU. I have been talking to the Royal Institute of British Architects, which is very worried about British graduates in architecture and those already in practice who often have services to sell across that wide range of 28 countries—as it is currently—and it is deeply concerned about whether its professional qualifications will continue to be recognised for the purposes of its ongoing business in that wider market. This is really serious stuff, and I hope that the Minister will address the matter when he has time to respond to these amendments.

New clause 11 is about how Parliament should be able to keep track, even after exit day, of regulations that are being made in the European Union. When we leave, we will obviously have our own jurisdiction and the EU will have its own jurisdiction, but if the EU continues to evolve its regulatory practices and to make new changes to rules and laws, we need some device to keep us informed in the UK Parliament so that we have the choice over whether to contract with those rules and stay in alignment or to ensure that we have regulatory equivalence. This is really more of a procedural new clause, but it is just asking the question of how we will keep in touch given that these are our near neighbours and the markets with which we have to remain aligned.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Leslie]

We must not take these arrangements for granted. Many of our constituents have taken them for granted for decades now and thought, “Oh, well, this is all seamless,” so they would not understand, as the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) said.

It is worth just walking through what happens when we do not have this sort of seamless arrangement. If a country is outside the customs union, this is what happens to goods that are destined for elsewhere. Before departure, people have to complete an export declaration, which is often lodged with a freight forwarding company. At the port of exit, the goods need to be cleared by the authorities, who decide whether inspection is needed. If so, the goods are possibly placed into storage and checked. Then, once they have left and travelled to the port of entry in the destination country, they are presented to the authorities via another declaration process, and potentially placed in storage again. Then there are country-of-entry checks and risk assessments; there is revenue collection; there could be checks for smuggled, unlicensed goods; and there are things such as hygiene, health and safety measures, labelling, consumer protection checks, the administration of quota restrictions, agricultural refunds, and trade defence checks to ensure that things are not being dumped unfairly in the country. All these administrative processes will absolutely add to the export process for goods.

[Melanie Onn]

Great Grimsby is well known for its fish and fish processing. We have discussed extensively some of the issues around delays to things such as automotive sector products, but we also have fresh products, such as fish. Fish is caught in Norway and imported to Grimsby, and it is an essential part of the fish processing industry. Any additional delays to that product will mean that supermarkets will not buy it—they will not want it—and the quality will reduce. That will have a really serious impact. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to the issues around the delays and to make sure that the Government understand that reducing those delays in any way possible has to be at the forefront of their considerations.

[Mr Leslie]

The delays will probably be of great concern to the companies involved in those shipments, because those goods have to be fresh and delivered on time. However, if we fall back on to WTO arrangements, there is also the potential 8% tariff for fish and crustaceans.