Next Government 'must prioritise outdoor play spaces'

The letter, which is being sent to 300 election candidates, highlights the barriers that prevent children from playing outdoors, and calls for the next Government to pledge to improve the spaces where families live to support community play.

It also rejects assertions made by the leader of UKIP Nigel Farage that children no longer play football in the streets because immigration has divided communities.

Behind the letter is Adrian Voce, member of the All Party Parliamentary Group on a Fit and Healthy Childhood, and Penny Wilson, play development worker for the Play Association Tower Hamlets.

Among the 100 plus signatories are independent researcher, writer and consultant Tim Gill and Melian Mansfield, chair of organisation London Play.

The letter identifies the main barriers to outdoor play as traffic and parental anxiety about ‘stranger danger’.

It also refers to previous research by Ipsos Mori and academics highlighting other reasons children do not play outside, including anxieties about bullying, too much rubbish on the streets and poorly maintained or boring playgrounds.

The letter goes on to say, ‘These barriers have become so great that some studies estimate that today’s children have less than 10 per cent of the space for free play, compared to only 30-40 years ago.

‘None of the evidence that we have looked at suggests that immigration is a significant factor’.

The letter concludes by making a number of suggestions to encourage community play, such as closing roads, lowering speed limits, creating safer routes to play areas, and increasing funding for playwork and community play projects.

In the longer term it says that ‘planning decisions and spatial developmental strategies must consider what children need from the built environment and the wider public realm’.

Mr Gill said, 'Nigel Farage was wildly wrong about why children aren’t playing out so much today. But he was right that outdoor play matters. It is not mere nostalgia to mourn the loss of children’s freedom to play. It’s a serious problem that politicians of all hues need to tackle.'

Last month, Mr Farage suggested that children do not play football in the streets because they don't feel 'at ease' with the level of immigrants in their towns and cities.

Unveiling an election poster in Dover last month, he said, ‘I want to live in a community where our kids play football in the streets of an evening and live in a society that is at ease with itself.

'And I sense over the last decade or more we are not at ease.

'If we went to every town up eastern England and spoke to people about how they felt, their town, their city had changed in the last 15 years, there is a deep level of discomfort, because if you have immigration at these sorts of levels integration doesn’t happen.'

'Play under threat'

Delegates at the National Union of Teachers' (NUT) annual conference this week also raised concerns that children's play is 'under threat', with the move by schools to reduce the time spent on play-based activities to meet requirements of the formal curriculum.

Commenting after the debate, Christine Blower, general secretary of the NUT, said, 'Our children are already under pressure in schools. They are some of the most tested in the world. They also have some of the lowest levels of satisfaction and well-being of any children in the developed world. Restricting opportunities for play can only worsen the situation. Breaks in the day are not only important for children – they are also essential for enabling teachers to do their job well.
 
'That’s why the NUT will be campaigning for legislation to ensure that all children have a statutory entitlement to break times and lunchtimes.'