Plan for Play Newsletter – September 2026

Hello!
There’s been a lot happening over the past few weeks as part of our Plan for Play programme – so let’s bring you up to speed.

Across Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, we’re investing more than £4.6million to improve local play areas: creating exciting, inclusive places that children and young people can enjoy for years to come. That funding is predominantly made up of the developer contributions (known as the Community Infrastructure Levy) and third-party grants.

Significant refurbishments have already been completed at Treasure Island, Bourne Valley and Queen’s Park and our teams are currently hard at work at Noyce Gardens, Kings Park, Mallard Road and Hatchards Field: they will all re-open in the coming weeks having undergone major upgrades.

In October, we’ll be at Muscliff Park, Hamworthy Park, Dawkins Road and Green Road to get started on serious improvements at those sites – installing new equipment and putting play firmly back at the heart of local communities.

Alongside these major refurbishments, we’re also hard at work on a wide-ranging programme of repairs and improvements at dozens of play areas. This includes sites like Mandale Road, St George’s Field, Oakdale Park and Slades Farm.

Setley Gardens, Chesildene Avenue, Landford Way & Scotts Hill Lane

What’s really important for us is that these projects are being shaped, directly, by the views of local families, schools, community groups, children and young people: making sure the new designs and refurbishments properly reflect what local communities want and need.

That community feedback has guided our plans and funding allocations, and earlier this month we announced that Setley Gardens will receive a major refurbishment – alongside repairs to equipment at Chesildene Avenue. This follows a consultation with local families about proposed investment across three sites: Setley Gardens, Chesildene Avenue and a potential new playground in Landford Way.

62% of respondents favoured improvements to Setley Gardens and Chesildene Avenue and, as a result, funding will be allocated to these two sites, instead.

We are aware also, that we receive a lot of questions about Scotts Hill Lane Park, Christchurch, and we want to be clear that we share the frustration of residents. The site has been closed for many years and unfortunately, we don’t own the land; that puts us in a really limited position about what improvements we can carry out. We are progressing conversations with the landowner about the transfer of the site and we are doing everything we can to get that over the line.

Further investment opportunities

As work continues, we are actively exploring additional funding opportunities that could help us expand this first phase of Plan for Play even further. The next round of Neighbourhood CIL funding will launch shortly, and our team remains keen to work with members and community groups to support applications that could unlock further investment in local play facilities.

This is the largest investment in play in BCP Council’s history and one of the most significant programmes of its kind, on a per resident basis, anywhere in the country.

We know there is still more to be done, and we are always working on options to go further, but we hope you would agree that the last few months have shown just how much can be achieved when the Council works alongside passionate communities to deliver tangible improvements.

How to stay updated

With work really ramping up over the next few months, we will have no shortage of good news to share.

All our updates go onto our BCP Council social media pages, as well as the BCP Parks and Open Spaces socials. That’s where we share our most frequent news, but we also have our Weekly News resident email bulletin, and this website which is the first place to see our final designs and start dates for future works. You can also sign up to receive our monthly newsletter (details below).