Play parks in a terrible state

It is encouraging to see that the new Legacy Park features a children’s play area [‘New city park to bloom by summer’, Gazette, April 1]. As a father of young children, I know how vital these installations are to families. Especially as the weather begins to get warmer, we parents need to reintroduce our children to the great outdoors and catch up on a year’s limited socialising with friends – which in many ways has hit young children the hardest. The launch of a new play park always receives a mini fanfare of publicity for the council or the organisation behind it. Receiving less publicity is the state of many of our community play areas a year or so later.

My children enjoy visiting our nearby play area in Victoria Park. Sadly, for many months, much of the play equipment has been damaged, or is missing. Requests to the council to replace the swings and repair the broken fixtures appear to have fallen on deaf ears, and at the time of writing, we have no idea when our play park may return to working order. Lockdown has been highly detrimental to young children. For their social development and physical and mental wellbeing, we need get them outside playing with their friends again. Play parks are an important piece of the jigsaw in terms of community health.

Council leaders always seems to have money for large-scale infrastructure projects. I believe our representatives must start paying attention to the smaller ticket items too.

Alex Lister

Liberal Democrat candidate for Westgate, and for Canterbury City North