A league table rating the quality of parks, adventure playgrounds and youth activities in each area of England is to be published by the Government as part of a new strategy designed to encourage children to play outside more.

Teams of “play rangers” will be recruited to ensure that “boring” swings and slides are supplemented with more adventurous and challenging equipment.

Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary, said he wanted to introduce an element of controlled risk into outdoor play and to challenge local authorities that were closing adventure playgrounds for fear that parents would sue them in the event of an accident.

His comments, at the publication yesterday of a consultation document, Fair Play, follow research showing a decline in opportunities for children to play outside. One in four aged 8 to 10 today has never played outside without an adult present. One in three parents will not allow children aged 8 to 15 to play outside their house or garden and the average age at which children are allowed outside unsupervised has risen from about 7 in the 1960s and 1970s to just over 8 today.

Where there are playgrounds, children and their parents do not rate them very highly, with only 44 per cent describing them as good or very good, the document says. It proposes the creation of a new indicator for local authorities enabling them to gauge children’s opinion of the quality of play areas in the hope that this will persuade town halls to improve them.

Emphasising that children wanted more than “boring” swings and slides, Mr Balls said: “There is a general lack of quality, supervised adventure play for 8 to 13-year-olds. If you don’t want to do something a bit risky, too often people say, ‘We can’t do that because of health and safety’. It is the risk aversion in some cases which stops things happening, which I want to tackle.

“If people are looking for excuses not to do things, then fear of litigation is an easy excuse. But I think there are very few examples of children or parents taking action because of play facilities.”

In addition to playgrounds, councils also needed to create spaces for teenagers, where they could gather or take part in musical, sporting or other activities, Mr Balls said. Adults must not rush to judge teenagers they saw in groups and must be more willing to share public space with them.

The play strategy includes a promise to spend £235 million over the next three years developing up to 3,500 play areas. This includes £2 million each for 30 authorities to build new adventure playgrounds.

At the same time a £190 million lottery programme called myplace, will fund venues where teenagers can take part in music, drama and sport after school and at weekends.

The consultation document also recommends that planners and house builders should be given training on the importance of designing safe access routes to play areas for pedestrians on new housing developments.

But Michael Gove, the Shadow Children’s Secretary, said that Mr Balls was not doing enough to “stop lawyers getting rich” by suing schools and charities every time a child had an accident in a play area. “Parents and children need more than warm words from Ed Balls about creating exciting areas to play,” he said. “Ministers have endlessly criticised the compensation culture without coming up with any solutions to deal with it.”

The head teacher of the school where Mr Balls sends two of his children has resigned before the issuing of a critical inspection report. Carron Adams said she was leaving Grazebrook Primary in Stoke Newington, North London, for personal reasons.

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