Lottery hands over £12m of play dough for children

Area:

England

Programme:

Childrens Play

Release date:

19 2 2007

The £12 million play cash pot is being shared among 32 local authorities across England who will use the money to deliver portfolios of projects that develop, create, improve and design innovative children’s play facilities.

Sir Clive Booth, Chair of the Big Lottery Fund, said: “This funding is a fantastic investment for children, their families and communities, at a time when the issue of children’s wellbeing is high on the agenda in the UK. Every child deserves the right to a good childhood and play is a vital factor in a child’s physical, emotional and social development. With the right play provision, we hope that people will feel confident to allow their children to play beyond the home and to enjoy the wealth of benefits that play brings.”

Among the successful projects today is the Brent Children’s Play Service who have secured funding worth £741,336 to deliver four projects offering quality play opportunities to children throughout Brent. One project will transform a local area into a first class adventure play centre and will include adapted equipment for children with disabilities. A Mobile Play project will bring play into parks and open spaces, where there are no play facilities. A specialist play centre for children with special needs will be developed, along with a play equipment store to provide hours of fun for children across Brent.

Children in Bath and North East Somerset will also benefit from today’s payout. The Bath and North East Somerset Council have received £296,875 to provide children aged between 5 and 16 years of age with free play opportunities. New teams of Community Play Rangers will work in parks and open spaces, engaging children and young people, and developing free play and community links. There will also be two mobile play schemes; one to target children aged 5-13 years in isolated rural areas where there is no school holiday provision or community venues, and the second will target children and young people aged 11-16 from across the authority area. This will give children and young people opportunities to get out and about in the holidays, mix with their peers and experience a wide range of challenging and exciting play activities.

The Big Lottery Fund’s Children’s Play programme has allocated £124 million to local authority areas, to help improve or develop play provision. To access the funding, local authorities have to develop appropriate play strategies and ensure they work in partnership with local agencies such as voluntary and community groups. Local authorities will use the funding to manage portfolios of local play projects across their areas.

The table below lists all 32 awards from today’s announcement totalling £12,259,231.

Further information

Big Lottery Fund Press Office: 020 7211 1888
Out of hours contact: 07867 500 572
Public Enquiries Line: 08454 102030
Textphone: 0845 6021 659
Full details of the Big Lottery Fund programmes and grant awards are available on the website: www.biglotteryfund.org.uk

Notes to Editors

• The Big Lottery Fund will support children’s play with £155 million through:

1. the £124 million Children’s Play programme, with funds available to every local authority area in England;
2. a separate £16 million Playful Ideas programme focussing on innovation; and
3. a £15 million grant to the Children’s Play Council, part of the National Children’s Bureau, to fund England-wide development and support.

• Under the Children’s Play programme, in deciding how best to allocate the available funds to each authority the Big Lottery Fund have allocated: 50 per cent of the funding on the basis of child population, and 50 per cent of the regional population living in the most deprived 20% of Super Output Areas included in the Index of Multiple Deprivation 2004. The minimum amount allocated to any local authority is £200,000.
• Under Playful Ideas registered charities; voluntary or community groups; charitable or not-for-profit companies; social enterprises; and town and parish councils can apply. However, other organisations, such as schools, can work in partnership on Playful Ideas projects.
• The Big Lottery Fund awarded a grant to the Children’s Play Council a strategic alliance of organisations working to promote the importance of play and to stimulate better play opportunities. Play England - a project of the Children’s Play Council - lead on this work by helping agencies to develop play strategies and apply for Children's Play funding. For further information please visit www.ncb.org.uk
• The Big Lottery Fund rolls out close to £2 million in lottery good cause money every 24 hours, which together with other Lottery distributors means that across the UK most people are within a few miles of a Lottery-funded project.

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