Better Play For Islington<br><br>Over £600,000 of lottery funding has been awarded to Islington to spend on improving play facilities for local children and young people over the next three years.<br><br>The bid was secured after the Islington Play Partnership drew up a strategy based on an audit of current play opportunities and on what children and young people and their parents told us they wanted. These included safety, choices, accessibility, nearness to home, quality of equipment and inclusiveness.<br><br>Islington's bid for the new funding included projects to address these priorities in a number of ways. Some parents and children had raised concerns about not feeling safe about playing in unsupervised play areas, so the council will be introducing a play ranger service in the evenings, weekends and school holidays. The rangers will be on hand to supervise play and offer organised activities and mobile equipment in our parks and on our estates.<br><br>More than 25 % of children in the target age group use Islington's adventure playgrounds but many of the facilities are worn out and not suitable for some children with disabilities, so a project is planned to improve the quality and accessibility of these areas. Money will be spent on equipping school playgrounds so some schools are able to open their facilities outside of school hours. A project will also begin to create a new outdoor play space on the Andover Estate. There are over 340 children aged 16 or under living on the estate, which puts huge pressure on the current play facilities. The new space will be designed using natural spaces, with mounds, planting, seating and some fixed play equipment.. It will also be supervised by the new play rangers to ensure that it's an inviting, safe place for youngsters to visit.<br><br>Ursula Woolley, Executive Member for Children and Young People said "This is great news for children and young people in Islington. Being able to play outside easily is so important for children and our new play rangers will be a great innovation to help them do that and feel safe about it. I'm delighted we've got the funding, and very grateful to all the voluntary organisations in the Islington Play Partnership who helped with the funding proposal. We don't have that much open space in Islington and I'll be very proud if we can use this money so that all our young people enjoy what we do have."<br><br>Notes to Editors <br><br>The Big Lottery Fund awarded Islington the money for a range of projects in the bid, which was drawn up by the Islington Play Partnership and based on a new play strategy 'Coming Out to Play'. The Islington Play Partnership includes IPA (Islington Play Association), voluntary sector play providers, Groundwork, HFI, CEA, the PCT, EC1 New Deal and a number of Council services.<br>
Page Last Updated: 17 December 2009