I am really pleased to see the reopening this week of the Children’s Play Area at Furnace Green Playing Fields. This follows its closure for several weeks while the area was expanded and had all new and modern equipment put in. This is the latest Children’s Play Area to be completely refurbished as part of a major long-term programme of investment in children’s play across Crawley that I worked hard to secure in 2013 when I was the Council’s Cabinet Member for Leisure and Culture.
Since then, many Children’s Play Areas in the town have been successfully revamped with new equipment of a high play value and we still have more to come, such as the neighbourhood Play Areas in Tilgate. All this good news may seem like the obvious thing to do when many of the town’s Play Areas were showing their age with old equipment that didn’t excite or challenge our children that much. However, it was actually somewhat challenging as I did face some resistance to the closure of some very small and poorly used Play Areas, which was needed in order to afford the investment in new and more challenging equipment that today’s children enjoy.
At one time, I was even branded a “roundabout robber” in the local press and had a photograph of me mocked up as a highway robber complete with mask. While that may have been mildly amusing in itself, what it represented was short-sighted and wrong. I was right to stick to my guns and seeing how popular our revamped Children’s Play Areas are with Crawley’s children is all the vindication I need.
Childhood today is very different from 20 or 30 years ago and it is great that there are so many different things for today’s children to do. The downside is that the growth in home entertainment devices and computer gaming has led to many children being much less physically active than what their parents were when they were young. Childhood obesity levels have risen and this reinforces the need to make traditional physical play inviting and fun for our children.
Councillor Duncan Crow, Leader of Crawley Borough Council Conservative Group
16th November 2016