'We are sad our play park will be shut for months'

A city play area has closed for a major revamp, leaving families with young children disappointed.

The play area at War Memorial Park has become outdated, Coventry City Council said, and it has received additional funding to rebuild it, replace the water feature and put a multi-use games area in its place.

But visitors have told BBC CWR they only found out about the closure when they arrived with children to find it fenced off with a notice suggesting it will re-open in 2027.

"We were just very disappointed to be honest. We realised that the kids have gone back to school but there are other children" Sandra Park, who was there with her grandchildren, told BBC CWR.

However Sarah Elliott, the council's head of environmental services, said 1,500 people had responded to a survey about the plans ahead of the closure, prompted by the closure of the tender period for firms to bid for the contract to rebuild it.

Elliott said: "We're talking to a number of companies, letting them know what people have told us. So they will come forward to us with suggestions, and we will pick something nice as we move forward."

She said other new facilities were planned for the park, with work on these expected to take place later this year.

"We're looking at padel tennis, we've already got tennis courts, there's all sorts of things there.

"And we're going to do it over the winter, because that's obviously when people use the facilities the least."

However, a leading child psychologist specialising in play said the council should keep any closure of the play area to a minimum.

Professor Helen Dunn, a board member of the charity Play England, said although the rest of the park might be open, the mental health benefits of play cannot be underestimated.

"Children need spaces to go, where their play is protected and they can be outdoors and playing, be with other children, moving their bodies," she said.

"And so work that we've done at the university has shown that the more time children spend playing outside, the better their mental health is, which obviously is also a big concern at the moment."

She called on the authority to make sure that the closure of the existing facilities was kept to a minimum.

"What we would hope is that councils are thinking carefully about how can they make sure that they are only closing the playground for the minimum amount of time necessary to get the work done and aren't thinking 'Oh, let's just do that bit now and then we'll wait a few months and we'll do a bit more'.

"We already heard families are going there and they're sad that it's not open. So sometimes it is necessary to close the whole playground in order to really develop something new and exciting for the community.

"But if you're going to do that, plan it really carefully so that it's closed for as short a time as possible."

Elliott confirmed that the plan was for the new play area to be opened by spring 2027, even though the tendering process had not yet been completed and no designs submitted.

"We've met with a number of companies who've come and talked to us about options for what we can have there. Mixing that with what people have told us, we will come up with a 'spandangling' new facility for March 2027."

She said work to decommission the existing area, including the removal of a defunct water feature which she said had suffered a "catastrophic failure", was a major piece of work.

"There's a lot of pumps and all sort of equipment that we've got to remove. We've got to make [it] safe so you can put things on top.

"So it's quite a big piece of work, which is why people are seeing what they're seeing at the moment."

Elliott said the park was the biggest in Coventry and well-used, which meant facilities had to match visitors' expectations and the existing equipment was no longer as up-to-date as it could be.

"Over a million people go to it. Really well-used, lots of wonderful facilities.

"We will still have facilities and people do want accessibility.

"They want to feel safe on the equipment."

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