The Accessibility of Children's Play Areas

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:12 pm on 17 July 2018.

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Photo of Angela Burns Angela Burns Conservative 2:12, 17 July 2018

Well, of course, you hit on the word 'play', and you said that everybody should have access to be able to play, especially young children. We talk in this place a lot about obesity, about making our kids healthy and fit and active and all the rest of it, and yet, First Minister, what I'd be interested to know is what is your Government doing—your Government, the one here in Wales—to ensure that the planning system in Wales takes due regard of the necessity to have safe, accessible play areas, close to homes that are currently being built? Because too many times you get to a situation where the developer will actually, perhaps, through the use of a 106 agreement or something, put aside an area for a play area, but it happens to be the other side of a busy main road or it happens to be the other side of the village where kids can't access it. In the old days, we used to put our play areas near our houses so that the parent at home or the carer could look out and just check the kid was still safe and out there playing. We can't do this now, and I've seen planners use the pavement, the green grass by the sides of pavements, as part of the square footage to add to the so-called 'playing area' available on a housing development. How can we stop that? How can we make safe play areas that small kids can access all the time, where people can watch them and know that they are truly, truly protected?