PLAYGROUNDS must be made more adventurous with an added element of controlled risk if children are to get the best out of them, one of Britain’s leading experts on play will say today.

David Yearley, of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, says that an over-concentration on safety in recent years has resulted in the spread of “boring” public play areas, which posed risks of a different kind.

It is when children become bored with spaces that they are supposed to play in that they turn instead to play in really dangerous places, such as along railway lines, river banks and on roads, Mr Yearley is due to tell the society’s play safety conference. With £124 million in lottery money now earmarked for improving playgrounds, playground designers, planners and installers should think about “designing in” a bit of danger.

“If you have a playground that doesn’t have an element of controlled risk, then children will not be challenged physically and they may seek adventure elsewhere,” Mr Yearley said last night.

In recent years traditional pieces of equipment such as climbing frames have been replaced by multifunction pieces of equipment that combine climbing with features such as monkey bars and shelters.

At the same time, safety surfacing, often made from resin, has replaced concrete. While it can help to prevent serious injury when a child lands on its head, this kind of surfacing can be more dangerous in certain circumstances, Mr Yearly said. “If a child falls off and lands on their arm half way along a zip line or cable way, onto concrete, because of the low friction, they will be dragged along and will suffer cuts and bruises.

“But on a safety surface, because of the increased friction, the arm will stay behind and the rest of the body will keep moving and that’s when you can get bone fractures,” he said.

Mr Yearley also said that over-cautious parents who continually reined in their children could be as much to blame as the equipment for playground boredom.

“As a parent, I want to protect my child from harm. However, if you protect them from any kind of risk, they never build up their ability to assess risk themselves. Then they fail to take that ability into adulthood for tasks such as driving that do involve risk assessment,” he said.

Around 40,000 British children aged under 16, out of a total of 12 million, are injured each year while playing. Playground accidents cause one child death every two to three years.

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