Plan for Play Newsletter – March 2026

Good afternoon,

As a mum, grandma and BCP Council’s portfolio holder for Play Strategy, I am enormously proud of the improvements our Plan for Play programme is delivering.

We’re investing more than £4.6million into upgrading over 120 play spaces across Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, inspired by ideas from local children, young people and families.

That means putting play spaces back at the heart of our communities for years to come – delivering on what our communities have told us matters most to them.

I know that what matters most to our residents is what is happening to their local play spaces: that’s why we’re making sure we share regular updates highlighting work as and when it happens.

That includes this newsletter, which we send out each month, as well as frequent updates across our social media platforms and weekly resident news bulletin.

And whether it’s quick improvements such as new swings at Churchill Gardens and Mallard Road or major refurbishments at Queen’s Park, and soon, Treasure Island – our team is out and about hard at work on a regular basis.

The Plan for Play team has had a really busy few weeks since our last update – battling the changing weather to deliver improvements that benefit our children, young people and families.

Recent upgrades have seen new swings installed in Churchill Gardens and Seafield Gardens (kindly funded by local community groups) as well as new equipment in place at Moordown Rec.

The team has been able to re-open the Kingston Road play space, which had been closed for some time, as a result of surface repairs and the installation of replacement equipment.

And next month we get underway with our next major refurbishment with £130,000 of upgrades to Treasure Island – giving budding buccaneers a place to play with freedom once again.

Behind the scenes we’re progressing full-scale replacement and refurbishment works at Anchor Close, Kings Park, Noyce Gardens and a dozen more sites to go hand-in-hand with our repairs and upgrades at more than 100 other locations.

In recent months we have visited Noyce Gardens, Mallard Road, Muscliff Park, Kings Park (Ashley Road), Bourne Valley and Hamworthy Park with play companies who will now draw up design proposals based on all the suggestions and ideas you shared before getting to work on your priorities – and we’ll share frequent updates as work progresses.

We’ve also been able to announce an additional £293,000 of funding for further improvements across play spaces thanks to funding allocations from Round 7 of the Community Infrastructure Levy Neighbourhood Portion grants. This means we can deliver even more improvements than originally planned and take our total investment to more than £4.6million.

Together, our team is creating welcoming, imaginative and inclusive play spaces for children and families to enjoy for generations to come – and I’m really proud of how we’re transforming local play spaces to better serve their communities.