Every morning, I roll up the blinds in my toddler’s bedroom and we look outside her window to say what we can see. “Brrrummm” when a car goes past. The “ding-ding” of a bike bell. Mesmerised staring if ever a plane flies overhead. And in recent days, to add to this electrifying cityscape: a playground.
A playground on our doorstep! All hail the gods of municipal munificence! This should be a life-changing new addition to our days: the permanent promise of immediate escape for a child with parents who forgot to make plans.
But each morning, as we watched the space being cleared, equipment arriving and hard-hatted men laying soft-surface ground, we realised with dismay – and hilarity – that it was over before it began. Just three metres squared of rubber mulch, an unpainted metal pole aspiring to be a seesaw, cushioned by two tyres, and a hole in the ground for a mini trampoline. Job done. It looks like something out of Chernobyl, had Pripyat’s city planners had less taste.
We are not alone. A wander through nearby housing developments exposes a similar pattern: spots gated and marked as playgrounds, but with merely a raised log to walk along, a swing frame with no swing. And not a child in sight. My toddler clings to the log, and cries.
It’s a subtle change, but one that is hopscotching across the country. Whether you live in an urban block of flats like I do, or a new-build housing estate surrounded by countryside, developers are increasingly being handed the responsibility for play – and shirking it. Housebuilders make promises to councils and the public – for a certain proportion of affordable homes, a new GP surgery, extending the primary school – in what are known as Section 106 agreements. But once they have built the houses, they often go back on plans for what one architect describes to me as “the goodies” that make us want to move somewhere in the first place. Councils simply aren’t powerful enough to force them to follow through. This phenomenon is symbolised by the increasing crapness of UK playgrounds – or, if I may, “deplaytion”.
The economist JK Galbraith described the “atmosphere of private opulence and public squalor” of postwar America in The Affluent Society (1958). He could have been writing about Britain’s property developers and the nowherevilles they leave behind.
More and more people are reporting rubbish playgrounds built by housing providers to the charity London Play, which asks the public to submit photos of the worst offenders to its “Saddest Playground” campaign. “Quality, accessibility, variety and play value are too often overlooked by developers and planning officers,” says its director, Fiona Sutherland. “The result is the type of tick-box playgrounds that fail not just children but the wider community too… well-used joyful spaces are far less likely to suffer from neglect or antisocial behaviour.”
Councils have long struggled to maintain their playgrounds or open new ones since budget cuts were imposed more than a decade and a half ago. In the UK, nearly 800 playgrounds closed between 2013 and 2023, and we’re still seeing the effects. From Leicester to Greenwich in south London, children are on the brink of losing beloved local adventure playgrounds because of council funding pressures.
This isn’t just a story about money. Attitudes towards play regressed to the Victorian “seen-and-not-heard” mentality during the pandemic, when the nation was kept indoors. Since then, with many adults still working from home, there has been a rise in intolerance towards children playing outside in residential areas. Housing providers have been putting up more “no ball games” signs, imposing play curfews and even threatening eviction in response to complaints about the noise of children playing, I’m told by Alice Ferguson, who co-founded the movement Playing Out.
Jasmine Hoffman, a mother of three who is challenging the proliferation of “no ball games” signs on her housing development, shows me “toxic” messages in her block’s WhatsApp chat, complaining about kids ignoring the signs. But to her, the company who runs the block is to blame. “Play is being designed out of everyday living environments,” she tells me. “There is a complete disconnect with what happens when a space is handed over to a landlord, or managing agent. They don’t have any responsibilities or incentives to maintain it.” She has suggested planting trees and bushes to absorb some of the sound.
Last year, an independent inquiry by the Raising the Nation Play Commission revealed that outdoor play has declined by 50 per cent in a generation. Poorer play areas are part of this picture, as are overprotective parents, traffic, digital life and the more intensive school day. The commission recommends a national play strategy from the government to address the problem. The last one was 18 years ago, before most adults owned a smartphone, let alone their kids.
While Labour wavers on whether to ban social media for under-16s, there is growing concern within the government regarding deplaytion. In her most recent Budget, Rachel Reeves announced £18m to refurbish play areas. And for the first time, proposed revisions to national planning policy include the need to consider children in street and space design. Perhaps, in time, when she looks out of her window, my daughter will have a better view.
[Further reading: In Cambridgeshire, a straw bear burns to the ground]
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This article appears in the 28 Jan 2026 issue of the New Statesman, How we escape Trump
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