The Struggle for Our Playgrounds Continues

At last weeks full Council meeting (on November 13) a small protest was organized by the workers and volunteers who run the cities adventure playgrounds. In the spirit of the protests organized last year, this was a polite bid to persuade Sir Peter Soulsby’s Council, or at least some of the Councillor’s under his antidemocratic mandate, to rethink the tendering process for the services currently in progress for the outstanding public services they already provide.

It appeared that the workers legitimate concern was piqued by the fact that they were led to believe that four of the cities nine playgrounds were soon to be taken over by a new external provider. The Leicester Mercury reported on this development some days later (on November 16) noting that the Council are “now considering awarding contracts at four of the adventure playgrounds to a new provider…”

Yet contrary to the understandings of the people running the four playgrounds who had been in contact with Soulsby’s Council last week and were under the impression that a new provider had already been decided, the Mercury added that a Council spokesperson had said: “The procurement exercise is not yet complete and these contracts have not yet been awarded, so we can’t yet give any details about the bid.”

Given the underhand manner in which Soulsby’s crew usually carry through Council policy, it is therefore unsurprising that following last years vicious attempt to slash funding, and effectively destroy the playgrounds, they are apparently acting in a similar fashion again. Although learning from their mistake last year the Council seems to be attempting to apply the tactic of divide and conquer by only undermining the viability of four of the playgrounds (at first anyway).

Also recognizing the resistance generated when they attempted to cut playground funding last year, the Council are keen to insist that funding will not be cut (at this stage anyway). No doubt if services are handed over to larger external provider — to a body more accommodating to the Labour Party’s corporate talk of rationalizing service provision (read: cutting funding and services) — future planned (but not yet publicly acknowledged) funding cuts will be more easily enforced.

The two Council members forming Leicester Independent Councillors Against Cuts, Barbara Potter and Wayne Naylor, however, view things differently from Soulsby and his nodding mini-mayors. They thus put their time in the Council chambers last Thursday to good use, by rallying to the defence of the adventure playgrounds, although their support and comments went unreported in the Leicester Mercury. Councillor Naylor said:

“Can the Assistant Mayor for Children and Young people give assurances that the four playgrounds that have been unsuccessful in gaining tenders to provide supervised play will continue to provide play, and that the staff will continue to be employed under the new operative for these playgrounds (named as Children’s Link) and that there will be no loss of provision to the communities where these playgrounds are situated?”

Vi Dempster then half responded by saying that the tendering process was still undecided, and made no assurance that loss of provision would not occur in the near future.

What is interesting here is Councillor Naylor’s revelation that Children’s Link appeared to be one of the external providers set to profit from the Councils attack on our cities outstanding playgrounds. Children’s Link appearing to be a national charity that has a big-business style focus on care provision, with their vice chair thinking it fine to boast of her work in privatising education by doing ‘groundbreaking’ work in setting up the first rural academy.

At the moment Children’s Link runs a new nursery in Beaumont Leys, called Muddy Boots Nursery, and so given the outstanding manner in which the adventure playgrounds have been managed in recent years one might expect this nursery to be managed in an even more exemplary manner. Yet this is not quite the case, and Muddy Boots first Ofsted report gave it a grade of 3. Outstanding would have been a 1, good a 2, and 3 meant that the nursery “requires improvement” — thankfully it was not give a 4, which would have indicated inadequate.

It is clear that whatever the outcome of the so-called ongoing “10-day period for objections to go in” there will be big protests opposing any untoward efforts by Soulsby’s Labour hatchet men and women to undermine the viability of our already excellent adventure playgrounds. Active and public support will also be ongoing from the Leicester Independent Councillors Against the Cuts, who are planning on holding a public meeting at the Brite Centre on Monday December 1 at 7 pm to talk about their future plans to oppose the Labour Council’s spineless budget of cuts.

For Wayne and Barbara’s recently launched web site see http://licac.moonfruit.com/

Earlier articles regarding attempts by the Council to cut the playgrounds funding include:

• “Smashing Playgrounds Again!“, November 19, 2013.
• “Labour Bullying with Playground Cuts,” November 20, 2013.
• “Children Protest to Save Adventure Playgrounds,” November 22, 2013.