Rarely will you pass through a residential area in the UK without at least catching a glimpse of a playground, offering a safe space for children to explore, and a convenient meeting point for families; in so many ways, playgrounds are the beating heart of the community.
For those overseeing these spaces (most often in local government), it’s crucial to ensure consistent upkeep, but despite regular attention, there will always come a time when the equipment is so thoroughly worn or damaged that more substantial action is required. At this point, local authorities face a choice: restore and patch up the equipment, or replace it entirely, and create an entirely new playground.
Many factors can influence this decision, and we’ve outlined some of the most common below, all of which we’ve encountered many times over our decades in playground design and installation.
Back to Health: Restoring Playgrounds
Restoration is a broad term which can describe a multitude of actions taken to reinstate the health of existing equipment or spaces. It can range from something as simple as a fresh coat of paint, to adding replacement parts (such as new chains on swing seats), or conducting targeted repairs of damaged items. Whilst these are minor operations, they can breathe new life into play spaces with relatively little time or money.
Some of the biggest deciding factors that influence councils to choose restoration include:
Every Penny Counts
In the wake of a pandemic and ongoing global conflicts, economies around the world are experiencing the knock-on effects, and organisations of all kinds are seeking to do more with less. In the UK, local government funds are tighter than ever, and barely a day goes by without more bad news on another council facing financial difficulty. This means that, whilst they have an imperative to ensure their play spaces are kept up to date, authorities will also seek to spend limited resources wisely. If a playground requires attention, the relatively cost-effective nature of repairing and restoring, as opposed to an extensive transformation, makes it much more appealing.
Speedy Service
With some councils overseeing tens or even hundreds of local parks and playgrounds, time is very much of the essence when it comes to maintenance. The closure of a single park, or a single prominent item within it, can cause major upheaval to the community, as demands on time and money may make it unfeasible for families to go elsewhere. This is where restoration can be a lifeline for councils. Applying a paint and polish or acquiring a replacement part for a damaged item are all much quicker than introducing an entirely new range of equipment, which will typically involve a much lengthier period of design, manufacture and installation. The expedited process of restoration is good for everyone, as it causes a minimum of community disruption, whilst allowing the council to demonstrate its competence by taking fast, effective action.
Preserving Precious Memories
Playgrounds are the centrepiece of many communities, and can endure for many years or decades - as a result, their value is often be measured in far more than the cost of the equipment. Some parents love to take their children to the same play spaces they visited in their youth, or derive comfort from seeing them play on the same equipment. This doesn’t mean, of course, that decades-old items should never be touched (especially if their safety is compromised) but it is also true that patching up minor damage is much more likely to retain the original character of a piece than replacing it completely. However, equipment itself is not the only consideration. Naturally occurring features in or around the playground (such as trees) are also well-known to hold great sentimental or historical value for some. Conducting a full replacement of an entire space is very likely to impact the existing landscape – it may necessitate removing a centrally positioned tree, for instance, which could incur the unhappiness of residents who retain memories of it from their own childhood. Choosing to restore equipment, in contrast, will retain these precious natural features for the community to reminisce over, and for future generations to enjoy.
A Fresh Start: Replacing Playgrounds
Despite these compelling benefits, there will always be situations where restoration is simply not the right option for the playground itself, for the community, or for those responsible for overseeing it. This is where replacement comes in.
As with restoration, replacement encompasses a range of actions, all resulting in what is essentially a completely new space ready to be enjoyed by the public. It can entail the removal of every piece of existing equipment, or an infusion of new equipment and surfacing whilst retaining some existing items. As with restoration, this course of action comes with a number of big benefits for councils, and some of the most common include:
Safety First
A central requirement of any public space is to ensure the safety of its attendants – and this is doubly important where children are concerned. When assessing the state of their playgrounds, councils will investigate not only their useability, but their safety; if enough of it is no longer useable or is likely to cause accidents, a full replacement becomes the only viable option. Failure to carry this out could result in a child seriously harming themselves or someone else, circumstances which could substantially damage the council’s reputation. Incidentally, older equipment (if unaltered) is legally obliged to comply with safety legislation as it was at the time of the product’s installation, rather than as it currently stands. This means that replacement equipment and spaces are by definition almost guaranteed to meet a much higher standard of safety legislation than that which they replace.
Listening to the Community
It is the responsibility of councils not only to improve local services, but to engage with their constituents in the process. Undertaking a full-scale replacement is an excellent opportunity to conduct extensive community engagement, and allow families, children and schools to provide their own input. In so doing, the council can show its capacity to listen to constituents, and demonstrate that it takes their views seriously.
Levelling the Playing Field
Whilst the prevalence of community playgrounds is hugely positive, the world has changed a great deal in the time since they began to spring up. Inclusion is now a greater concern than ever before, including of those with disabilities. Many public play spaces, however, having first been installed during the 20th Century, are not always best suited to cater for a diverse range of children in the 21st. Outdated equipment or features, for instance steps or platforms leading to the playground or insufficient flow space between its units, could inadvertently end up excluding many families. As attitudes around disability have modernised, however, play designers have begun to catch up, for instance by utilising inclusive physical features in their work such as wheelchair inclusive decks or drag ramps. Full scale replacement offers councils the opportunity to update outdated play spaces with these kinds of innovative products, rethink the area’s layout if necessary, and quite literally invite the entire community to join the fun.
Weighing up the Options
Whilst many of the factors outlined here clearly tend towards either restoration or replacement, some considerations are much more ambiguous. These include:
By Popular Demand
When assessing how to proceed with a damaged or degraded play space, a site’s popularity and level of usage are also crucial, and complex, considerations.
What is the location of the playground, for instance, how proximate is it to busy areas, and how frequently is it visited by the community? A heavily used space in a prime area is likely to wear more quickly due to the heavier footfall, and replacing it in its entirety would appear most appropriate, but this will also come with repercussions for the community. Closing the playground will force families to travel elsewhere for a prolonged period, whereas targeted repairs would allow the site to remain mostly open. On the other hand, a fully transformed new playground will always go a long way towards fostering a sense of community amongst residents, and it’s hard to overstate the pride that a new local amenity, such as a playground, can provide.
The same is true when considering a more remote, secluded space. A less used site would seem to suggest councils should focus on repairs rather than replacement – why invest stretched resources on upgrading a site which sees little attention? Much better, perhaps, to repair the equipment and keep the play space open to all, whilst saving money. Alternatively, a full replacement service, with new equipment and surfacing, could attract the attention not only of existing users, but new ones too, and in the process, help to relieve pressure on other local sites.
As with the environment, a playground’s popularity doesn’t immediately point an overseer towards either restoration or replacement, but instead invites them to carefully assess both options before proceeding.
Future-Focussed
An evergreen principle of sustainability is that the longer something can be kept fit for purpose, the better for the planet. This clearly means that repairing existing equipment is an environmentally sustainable choice, avoiding the adverse effects of replacement which include wastage in the form of the old equipment (if not recyclable), the fuel, power, people and time needed to carry it out, and the resources required to manufacture the new equipment.
Despite this, it would be untrue to say that full replacement has no environmental benefits at all. Whilst it undoubtedly creates waste and uses resources, technological advances and changes in environmental laws mean that new equipment is almost guaranteed to have been manufactured much more sustainably than that which it replaces – and due to modern preservative methods (such as up-to-date styles of pressure treating for wooden posts) it is likely to be far more robust, too. The net result is that replacement’s environmental impact should be more than offset by many years of future use.
Ultimately, it is for each playground provider to weigh up these nuanced arguments before coming to the right decision for their playground, their community, and the planet.
The Right Choice
Whilst this decision can often be a challenging one, we hope that the insights shared here will enable councils, and all who are responsible for public playgrounds, to better assess their own options, make financially beneficial, environmentally responsible, and community-focused choices, and continue to deliver unforgettable play experiences for their constituents for many years to come.
