ePetition details
Halt pay to play proposals
We the undersigned petition the council to halt all plans to charge children to use the adventure playground in Battersea Park.
The Conservative councillors have put forward plans that would involve charging £2.50 for children to use the adventure playground in Battersea Park. We believe charging children to play is unfair and ask that the proposals are scrapped immediately.
This ePetition ran from 23/04/2011 to 05/06/2011 and has now finished.
1014 people have signed this ePetition
Council response
Battersea Park Adventure Playground is without doubt a popular site, especially so at weekends when surveys show that half of those attending are not residents of Wandsworth.
At weekends, the site requires a high level of staffing and heavy usage means that the play structures require regular maintenance, both of which are costly at a time when council budgets continue to be under extreme pressure. Wandsworth Council is looking very closely at all areas of expenditure, as very significant savings have to be made across local government as part of the Coalition Government’s efforts to deal with the fiscal and financial problems inherited from the last government.
The introduction of the pilot charging scheme at weekends is intended to assess the feasibility of recouping some of the costs associated with the Adventure Playground in order to sustain the provision in the longer term. During the pilot, charges will not be levied on weekdays during school holidays, or after school hours during term time.
