More than 70 MPs are backing a campaign to revive England’s playgrounds as pressure grows on the government to do more to tackle community decline to fight Reform UK.
Labour MP Tom Hayes has tabled an amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill that would ensure playgrounds lost to development are replaced.
Politics Live: Chancellor performs ‘huge, huge U-turn’ on winter fuel
Mr Hayes told Sky News it is a personal subject as he grew up in poverty, caring for two disabled parents, and without his local playground “they wouldn’t have been able to afford any sort of leisure activity for me”.
“Talking to parents these days, with the cost of living crisis going on, they just don’t have play areas on their doorstep like they used to. What they have instead is rusting swings or boarded-up playgrounds.”
The Bournemouth East MP said this speaks to a “wider hopelessness” that people are feeling about “littering in their streets, graffiti on their walls, potholes in their roads”.
“It just makes people feel like nobody really cares about their area. That’s at a time when people are feeling hopeless about the possibility of change and Reform, obviously, are trying to capitalise on that.”
Under the last Labour government, Ed Balls and Andy Burnham launched England’s first and only play strategy, which aimed to create 3,500 new play spaces across every local authority – backed by £235m of funding.
It was abandoned by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition two years later and facilities have been in sharp decline since then, according to Play England which has developed the amendment Mr Hayes is tabling.
The amendment would require councils in England to assess play provision and integrate “play sufficiency” into local plans and planning decisions – similar…
