Playgrounds not reopening

[SnowdropSurprise]

The playgrounds in our town haven't reopened this weekend. I was wondering if any councils had gone ahead and opened them?

Our council said they needed more time to prepare. Not sure what preparations they mean. Gel dispensers? Closing off some equipment?

Anyone have any ideas?

We are in our local one now. Very busy. My daughter has bumped into a friend so very happy

I walked past my local one yesterday, lots of children/parents/teenagers there, I couldn't see any signs etc.
Surely it's parents/peoples responsibility to bring hand sanitiser etc if they want to use it?

Ours are open.. well, the 3 we’ve been too in our village anyway! No pub crawl for us, rather a park crawl! No idea if they are being cleaned etc, I doubt it. I just took hand sanitiser & have regularly washed DD’s hands. Honestly, her face this morning was one of pure joy. It made me cry 🙈

Ours are opening in a week or so.

The council said they need to do maintenance checks on them all first. Which I think is fair enough.

@megletthesecond

Ours are opening in a week or so.

The council said they need to do maintenance checks on them all first. Which I think is fair enough.

Why didn't they do maintenance checks last week when they knew playgrounds could open today?

I don't know, I just assumed they were open because it's 4th July so we used ours.

It's impossible to know really, isn't it? It's not like they're staffed. All we can do with outside spaces is listen to guidance. When the govt said they were closed we stopped going and now we've started again.

Can't you just go? A playground can't be literally closed so I'd say now it's allowed you can just go for it again.

The gates have been locked through the last few months so I’d say that’s literally closed.

Re handgel i guess they may be forgetting the older children out by themselves. And teens.

If equipment does harbour germs usually makes sense to work towards sinks especially in busy ones or zoos etc

Many councils contract out the h and s inspections and maintenance of playgrounds. Such people may well have been on furlough until now.

Our local parks are literally wrapped in orange mesh material or the gates are locked.

Re handgel i guess they may be forgetting the older children out by themselves. And teens.

If kids are responsible enough to be using playgrounds without an adult, they're surely capable of carrying a small gel and using it. I'd take a bet that eg using a climbing frame there's more risk to a child of injury than from CV .

impossible because I the council staff have probably been busy with more essential work or ill. Our bin collections aren't back up to speed yet. I'm not going to have a tizz about playgrounds.

Ours are opening from Monday, we drove past one and noticed they'd cut the grass and demolished a wooden shelter.

Our parks have locked gates with a sign and the swings are cable tied back. Eveyone has been really good, I've not seen a single person in them all this time.

We went to a park this morning, was very quiet, just us and one other family at a time (seemed to work out that as one family left, another arrived). All very friendly, smiley. Was a bit concerned by a girl getting on a swing next to my child but I figured they are 1m apart and not facing each other AND outdoors plus the incident rate here is low so for my own anxiety I comforted myself that this girl probably isn't the 1 in 2200 people who have it. We did lots of hand gel before and after each equipment (we have one that offers protection for 2 - 4 hours so I like the preventative aspect too).

Signs placed on gates as above but nothing more.

Some parks on our country drive were still shut, mostly ran by parish councils. I do wonder if its because they don't wnat tourists in their villagers but as my village living friend told me "the community page is filled daily with people talking about their trips to beaches, towns and shopping centres in nearby large towns" so I really hope it's not about keeping others away when they can come to ours!

I think in future I would prefer to avoid the swinging alongside a stranger. We're going to go at non peak times and in poorer weather to ensure more SD.

Seems absolutely bonkers to me that playgrounds are still shut. I would fully expect people to take hand gel for their children and to be sensible. In 8 weeks time the government is prepared to send near adults and adults (teachers) back into encloses environments mixing with several hundred others with zero precautions.

All open in this area, no signs or anything (some people have been using our local one for weeks anyway). We played for an hour at our nearest one and only saw one other family who we stayed an appropriate distance from. The drizzle probably helped. We used hand gel but otherwise played as normal- was lovely. Sad to see how much confidence the children had lost on the equipment but hopefully that’ll come back quickly.

Orange mesh barriers & signs/more tape prohibiting use here too.

@minipie

Our council did a big announcement they were opening them and then didn't

I don't know where you live minipie, but in some larger areas different playgrounds are managed by different councils, so your town council might by opening the play parks that they look after in a particular town, but the district council might not be opening the ones they look after.

I would say just go in them anyway then clean hands when you leave! The local councils are prioritising anything that is money making and not the kids, it’s terrible really! They should have starting preparations when it was announced last week! We climbed over the fence into our local park, had a 2 hour run around; my son was loving life, then my 4 year old had a 2 hour nap! They need fresh air, other kids to play with, and play ground equipment!

It’s crazy to think today I could have taken my kids out to a restaurant for lunch or a pub for a lunch inside and the lock was still on the playground!!!!

We just jumped the fence of ours to get in...

Outer London, ours are open with signs telling you they won't be cleaned and to wash hands. Am actually quite surprised our famously rubbish borough got it together to get the swings back up.

(Not very busy either, but the weather isn't great)

We wanted to open ours. The work we could have done was unmanageable. We can't clean the touch points, monitor who uses it etc.

We decided to put up signs about hand gel, no eating/drinking, and 2m distancing, and leave people to be responsible.

It's a tough call- ours has a low fence, so irresponsible people can use it anyway. Removing the bike lock and putting up signs just allowed the responsible people in.