Introduction

Following on from completing previous work for Stroud District Council, Ethos was commissioned in 2022 to undertake a play framework as part of a wider piece of work for their Play Area and Development Action Plan. The framework fed into the action plan which will inform decisions about where funding will be spent on council owned play areas to help reduce inequalities by providing accessible play spaces for all.

Our role

Ethos was tasked with compiling data to use to prioritise the play spaces for improvement. We firstly undertook site visits to assess the existing quality and set out recommendations for improvement. We then took different factors including deprivation, demographics and excess weight to prioritise the improvements into high, medium, and low priority for improvement. We then assessed the wider factors including the supply and access to other play spaces and made a recommendation to either retain, retain and enhance or consider for alternative use.

Results

• The proposed framework was successful
  ∟ The framework has successfully been used to help prioritise and identify which council owned play areas in the district require investment using capital investment funding from Gloucestershire County Council.