The Parks Department provides and maintains 89 children’s play areas. These include skateboard facilities, multi use games area and kick about areas for informal play.

There are many additional facilities provided and maintained by the Parish Councils. For information on play areas owned and maintained by your local parish or town council please contact the parish or town clerk.

We inspect all of our play areas on a regular basis. However, if you notice a problem in one of our play areas please contact the StreetSmart helpdesk on 01793 445501 or e-mail Streetsmart at streetsmart@swindon.gov.uk.

Playbuilder

This is an exciting new project to refurbish 22 play areas across the Borough of Swindon.

Swindon Borough Council is working on in partnership with Play England and the Government, with over £1.1m worth of improvements to be made over the next two years.

For more details please see Playbuilder.

Your Nearest Play Area

Please use the link below to find the facilities in your area

Play area Lists (including Locations)

The Importance Of Play

Play is an essential part of children’s life, and is vital for their development. It provides the mechanism for children to explore the world around them and a medium through which skills are developed and practised.

Refurbishment Programme

Currently the Council has an ongoing programme of playground refurbishment, at a rate of 2 – 3 play areas each year.

Each refurbishment is carried out in consultation with local residents, ward councillors, young people (youth groups) and users, amongst others, and the information gained from this process is used to ensure the refurbished play area has the correct mix of equipment in.

As part of the consultation process, we write to local residents  and other interested parties, inviting thier input into the design. If you would like to be included in this process please email the Parks Department at Parksenquiries@swindon.gov.uk

New Play Areas within Developments

Play areas in new housing developments are often designed and built by the developer. These are handed over to us for maintenance and ownership once approved, and all new play areas conform to current European standards.

Risk in Play

In play, children learn by doing. Through experimenting with their growing mental and physical abilities, children learn and gain in skills and confidence. Part of this learning process is through their mistakes and on occasions these mistakes will result in injury.

As a general principal, children need an element of risk on play areas. It is essential to their healthy growth and development. It is preferable for them to learn about risk, about their own capabilities and to develop the mechanism for judging it in controlled settings: for example play areas.

Play areas carry a variety of levels of challenge and difficulty. Not all children develop at the same rate and they can make an unrealistic assessment of their abilities or become over confident. Precautions such as safety surfacing will reduce the severity of injuries if the children make the wrong judgement, but the total reduction of injuries on play areas is an unrealistic expectation that some parents have.

Safety Surfacing

The provision of protective surfacing is not mandatory, nor will its use stop all playground injuries. Where installed, it conforms to European Standards. It is designed to reduce the severity of head injuries especially to toddlers. At present all of our play areas have safer surfacing beneath all their equipment.

Inspection Regime

All play areas are regularly inspected and cleaned by Swindon Commercial Services. These recorded inspections take place once a week during the winter months, and twice weekly during summer.

In addition there is an annual inspection by a certified organisation, such as RoSPA.

Further Information/Contact

Contact Us.