PLAYLINK / Free Play Network

What else needs to be done?

It seems to me that there has been much improvement in the last few years regarding the acceptance of risk in play provision and the comments on the website reflect this. The legal environment has also changed – in no small part to the efforts of my 3 co-facilitators (amongst others). However, there is still a problem at the front end, with those responsible for procuring play space provision being nervous particularly regarding litigation fears and general complaints. Maybe a few open questions might open the debate up about what still needs to be done



1) Should play spaces offer more or less risk than is freely available outside the play space?

2) What relevance do the standards En1176/7 have for natural play spaces?

3) How do we protect local authority officers from the fear of finger pointing and witch hunts if things go wrong?

4) What should the role of the playground inspector be in play space provision? Does it need to change?

5) What do people think about the subjectivity of risk assessments? Can they or should they be standardised?


Posted by: Paul Collings, Director, Timberplay Ltd, 06 July 2007, 08:31

Thanks for your excellent comments David & Bernard, These are difficult questions and we need input from people with different perspectives to help solve them. I was hoping for more opinions – I could argue with myself all day on some of them but here are some of my own inputs on these issues

1) Once we accept that risk is part of play and play provision should allow risk then surely play spaces should allow for more risk than outside that space? In some cases this happens, swings for instance are not found outside playgrounds and offer a benefit and a risk, in other cases we get extremely nervous about a risk that is absolutely commonplace outside the play area e.g. a wall with a fall onto a hard surface, trip hazards, water features. It’s a complex area with each situation being different and with some people making a valid point that if a risk can be mitigated then we should do so. My only plea is that when assessing risk we consider risks regularly encountered (and successfully navigated) outside the play area.

2) I think the trend towards natural play areas and the fact that most children learn to safely climb trees which stubbornly refuse to grow to en1176 further highlight what a nonsense the total reliance upon En1176/7 for safe play spaces is. Thankfully this is given more recognition in recent years but many tenders and insurance policies still stipulate compliance as obligatory.

3) I despair at aspects of our society and finger pointing and blame culture are high on my list. I learnt early in my management career that finger pointing stops people making decisions and leads to sub optimal outputs. I think that local authority officers are in the firing line for criticism from all angles, not least from disenchanted and ill informed members of the public who often have little power in their lives. The answer is not so easy, David and Bernards comments certainly help but in the overall picture, I think it boils down to leadership within the authorities.

4) In my ideal world (which also features Cameron Diaz as my wife) I think that risk assessors would only be part of the decision making process, providers wouldn’t get too concerned with risk ratings as long as they felt that the benefits justified the risk. Inspectors could then highlight non compliance issues and other risks without having to be experts in child behaviour and development. Others would provide that as part of the decision. Sadly, Cameron’s path has yet to cross mine and we also have a “tick box” culture where the above wouldn’t work. I therefore think that the trend towards more “rounded” inspectors that consider benefits as well as risks and understand behaviour is a welcome alternative. I do think that there is a long way to go though and as Bernard alludes to, some H & S people are much better than others

5) Who would want to live in a society where we all have the same opinions? But it does cause some problems. It reminds me of a man who every year foretells a crash in the stock market. When he is wrong no one takes any notice but when he is right he delights in crowing about how he was able to foretell the crash. If someone who is risk averse is ignored and an accident happens, they can make trouble. But what if no accident happens? Is there any comeback on the assessor? We tend to only look back for clues if something goes wrong and this makes us more and more a risk averse society despite the benefits of risk as highlighted by Robin
Posted by: Paul Collings, facilitator, 06 July 2007, 08:31

Thanks, Paul, for those questions. To attempt answers to your questions:

1) Should play spaces offer more or less risk than is freely available outside the play space?

I'm not sure that thinking in terms of 'more' or 'less' risk in terms of designated play space and outside the play space is the best way of approaching the general question of what's an acceptable level of risk in different contexts.

I can't find a way of thinking about this without returning to the general approach that asks us to justify a particular judgment-based risk level against a judgment-based view about the potential benefits of a there being a particular risk. In other words, it's not a question of being in or out of a playspace, but of assessing risks in the context of wished-for benefits. I'm not sure that introducing an additional category - i.e. in or out of a play space - helps us. It may be a distraction. To which, I add, 'I think'. I'd welcome comment on this - perhaps if only to highlight the flaws that I have not seen in my own argument.

2) What relevance do the standards En1176/7 have for natural play spaces?

My understanding is that the standards only apply to things designated 'play equipment' and then, most importantly, the standards are not mandatory. The risk assessment process has primacy when making judgments about risk. For more on this, do look at authoritative legal advice - Counsel Opinion - at www.playlink.org.uk. There is a link from the Home Page.


3) How do we protect local authority officers from the fear of finger pointing and witch hunts if things go wrong?

David's comments below need to be taken on board. But to re-iterate: providers MUST, in my view, work within the context of a formally agreed policy that states clearly the relationship of risk to play, the benefits that accrue from risk-taking, and that IT IS ONE OF THE OBJECTIVES of play provision to create the conditions that offer children and young people opportunities to take acceptable levels of risk. ('Unacceptable risk' = death or permanently disabling injury - this definition should form part of the policy).

There is no question in my mind that the policy is necessary; but real gains at every level are more likely if a process of formulating the policy is undertaken - one based on the exploration of ideas, not simply 'training'. A process that involves for example, Health and Safety Officers, Planners, Housing, Councillors and so forth. I do now unashamedly ask you to look at the PLAYLINK web site under 'policy' for more on this.

From a slightly different tack: it is not helpful for people committed to play to complain about a blame game, and then participate in it ourselves - which occurs at least sometimes. Individual Officers, not least H&S Officers, in many cases work within a context that is risk-averse and risk-illiterate, where they have few or no grounds for believing that their employers will support them in the event that their reasonable judgment becomes the subject of press or parental scrutiny. I need to say here that whilst it is the case that some H&S people we have encountered seem not to be comfortable with the concepts with which they have to deal, it is equally the case we have had the good fortune to engage with H&S Officers who have brought to play and their authorities a clarity about risk, benefits and objectives that has been of real benefit. To summarise: we need to create the context where ideas and concepts about risk, risk and play can be explored and elucidated. Rooted understanding and value-based commitment are foundational requirements.

4) What should the role of the playground inspector be in play space provision? Does it need to change?

Once again, David's comments are extremely pertinent. One extra point: there is variability in the views of Inspectors, even when hailing from the same organisation. The judgment you get can sometimes depend on which Inspector turns up on the day. Providers need to be clear and confident about their aims and objectives, and put themselves in the position to challenge judgments with which they disagree. This leads back to policy and policy making, points made above.

5) What do people think about the subjectivity of risk assessments? Can they or should they be standardised?

There's a difference between standardising a procedure and attempting to do the impossible, standardise a judgment.

I'm not sure - that's genuinely 'not sure' - if one procedure is better than another, but for sure, a 'standerdised judgment' is a contradiction in terms.

We say that what we are after is an 'informed subjectivity'; that is, roughly, one that recognises that there are facts; there is then the interpretation of the facts - e.g. what does a broken arm sustained in a playground 'mean'? - there are values and provision objectives; and then there is judgment which is necessarily 'subjective'. This does not mean 'random', or a response to which side of the bed I got out of that morning. It is bringing to bear a quality of mind to the particular question in hand. It is, in my view, a dangerous illusion to believe that judgments about risk levels is a matter of objectivity; or that objectivity is the 'gold standard' that we seek, but is somehow elusive. It is in fact the search for fools' gold. We are required only to make reasoned and reasonable judgments - that they may be proved wrong on occasion, is another matter.
Posted by: Benard Spiegal, Principal, PLAYLINK, 02 July 2007, 10:07

Challenging questions. A few initial thoughts...(I might change them)
1) I think playgrounds are areas where risk has been more carefully 'managed'. That is, far more thought has gone into the level of risk than has in other settings, and generally the level of risk is lower on playgrounds than in countless places commonly frequented by children - like streets, railway stations, river banks etc. This is supported by the statistics which show playgrounds to be oases of comparative safety.
2) I don't think BSEN has much relevance to natural play areas. I never found it much use for dealing with traditional climbing frames either. I put this down to the near impossibility of writing a standard to describe something which is so complex, and which must consider banefits as well as safety.
3) By providing them with authoritative documents like Managing Risk in Play Provision. I handle quite a few play-related legal cases as an expert witness, usually for the local authority. Pretty well every case has been assisted by the production of MRPP in court which ushers in a breath of fresh air. One of the problems in court cases is that expert witnesses for the claimant tend to be either from an engineering-type background or to be ex factory inspectors. For this reason their risk assessments fail to take account of the benefits of the activity, a balance which should always be made. For example, a fireman's pole could not be justified in a playground because of the associated risk, unless the benefit were factored in. The same applies to pretty well everything else on playgrounds, but surprisingly risk assessments seldom mention benefits at all! This makes me wonder how decisions about acceptability are being made. But to get back to the point, providers can help themselves by referring to key documents like MRPP in their policy statements, and making it clear that they are making the best judgements they can about the trade-off between risk of injury and benefits of play (fun, exercise, learning to play, learning about risk etc) in providing the play opportunity.
4) I think that playground inspectors need to be far more philosophical about what they are doing. I suspect they tend to focus on making measurements of equipment and comparisons with BSEN, which is more about self-protection (litigation avoidance) than supporting the needs of the child. Even so, this is only a tiny part of the job and has little to do with the purpose of play and maybe not much impact on safety either. The difficult part is getting the balance between benefit and risk at a level which is in accord with the aims of the playground. This inter alia requires the inspector to compare the playground against the aims set out in the provider's play policy. Failure to do this may mean that the playground is inspected against the inspector's, usually undisclosed, personal criteria, rather than that of the authority. Thus, you may not get what you want.
5) This is a very difficult area indeed, and I'm struggling myself to come to some answer. The question applies way beyond the realm of playgrounds of course. There are many difficulties and I'm not sure if standardisation is possible and I wonder if maybe it isn't even desirable. If we standardised it, that might lock us into some non-ideal world, just as I beleve parts of the BSEN have done. On the other hand, there are intriguing questions eg if you look at a wobbly, rustic bridge in a playground its obvious there's a foreseeable risk and if such existed in a factory or an office it would be regarded as 'high', but a) we allow the things on playgrounds and b) the statistics show that the risk of serious (life endangering) injury is very low. So what looks like a high risk subjectively, turns out to be a low risk objectively, no doubt because kids can cope with these things. So should inspectors be paying more heed to their objective knowledge or their subjective feelings? This I think also reinforces the need for playground inspectors to have had training in child development and not just, say, engineering. But it's odd, when I get a letter from a solicitor asking if I would be an expert, it usually starts "We are looking for an engineer...", which triggers my brain to ask "Why?".
Posted by: david ball, professor, middlesex university, 22 June 2007, 09:30