If you are a community group or parish or town council wishing to commission or improve a community space for children and young people in your area, Design for Play: A guide to creating successful play spaces provides useful guidance and case studies.

Design for Play outlines ten core principles for designing successful play spaces. The guidance states that a succesful play space incorporates the following features:

• bespoke: designed to enhance a setting
• well-located: in the best possible place, where children feel safe and comfortable to play
• designed to make use of natural elements: close to nature
• provide a wide range of play experiences: where children can access a variety of play opportunities 
• accessible to both disabled and non-disabled children: where disabled and non-disabled children can play together
• meets community needs: are loved by the community and reflect the aspirations outlined by residents during community consultation 
• allow children of different ages to play together: avoiding segregating children on the basis of age or ability  
• provide opportunities to experience risk and challenge: where children can stretch and challenge themselves in every way
• sustainable and appropriately maintained: for play value and environmental sustainability
• allow for change and evolution: evolve as children grow.

As well as advice on key design, specification and maintenance issues, Design for Play also provides advice on boundaries and fences, play equipment, providing natural elements for play, ground modelling, planting, natural features, impact absorbent surfaces, self-build play features, vandalism and general maintenance.

In the case of new housing developments, often play areas are something of an afterthought, only planned once everything else has been decided. That is why they are frequently located in a poor position, perhaps hidden from view, with only one access route, perhaps surrounded by tall blocks that will bounce sound around at night like a cavern. If building from scratch, ensure oversight from a distance, ideally 30m away or more if there is enough space, so that sound levels will be sufficiently reduced so that people can sleep at night even if there are young people hanging out nearby, but also children playing during the day can feel secure in the knowledge that parents and passers-by are able to keep an informal eye on them.

In some circumstances, it will be necessary to consider how the police might monitor the site both day and night. Children's needs must always take precedence over convenience, so try to work with the police to help them with their difficult task but remember that the objective of getting children outside playing regularly must come first. If you make the site too dull children will not use it, and tree climbing, den buidling and hide and seek are a vital part of play so don't make the site so open that it is no longer attractive to play in.

If refurbishing, before anything else make sure local residents are all agreed about the location and access routes. Think about the position of benches - will the users be able to see directly through a window into someone's home? Can someone seated there see who is approaching or do they have their back to the path?

Simple measures such as these can make a big difference to the success of the project and the satisfaction of neighbours as well as children. Play is an essential part of  a successful society and it is important that it is designed in the best way for everyone. 

A wide variety of professionals can help groups to implement these design principles successfully during the design stage of any new play space, including landscape architects, local authority environmental services and parks departments, local planning officers, environmental organisations, specialist national advisory bodies - for example the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), environmental and regeneration specialists - for example Groundwork,local community engagement groups or architecture centres, and safety agencies such as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA).

When designing your own play space it is important that you involve as many people as possible, including children and young people and their parents or guardians. Your local authority may have a specialist engagement team or a consultation strategy to give you ideas about how and when to undertake meaningful consultation and then feed this into the design process.

Inclusion by Design, published by the disabled children’s charity KIDS, shows how to create inclusive play environments for children and young people, based on the six principles of inclusive design:

• ease of use
• freedom of choice and access to mainstream activities
• diversity and difference
• legibility and predictability
• quality
• safety.

In particular, Inclusion by Design stresses the importance of involving children and families at each stage of the process of designing new play spaces. The KIDS publication: Our play – our choice provides a specific focus on consulting with disabled children. Participation Works and Play England have produced a guide on: How to involve children and young people in the design and development of play spaces.

Design for Play encourages local authorities to ensure children, young people and parents are at the heart of decisions about local play provision and new play spaces meet local need and reflect local input.

You can find out what is happening in your area through your local authority – each top tier (i.e. unitary or county council) should have a designated play lead: someone responsible for improving play opportunities at the local level. Many local authorities produce regular bulletins and information on new or improved play areas. Try your local authority website for more information. Some local authorities, such as Bristol and Dudley, maintain dedicated websites.

Your local authority should also have a play strategy and may be in the process of reviewing this in line with emerging priorities outlined in local development documents. These documents may establish important design principles to consider for your local area.

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