Buckie kids’ play park safety fears as brand new equipment refurbished by Moray Council crumbles
Fears have been voiced that equipment at a Moray play park is crumbling - scant weeks after it opened following a comprehensive, ground-up revamp.
Letterfourie play park in Buckpool, Buckie was part of a £188,000 refurbishment programme undertaken by Moray Council encompassing three play parks, the others being in Forres and Glenlivet.
It forms part of a wider £1 million upgrade grant from the Scottish Government’s Local Authority Play Park Renewal Programme.
Alongside an extensive community consultation last year kids at Cluny Primary School were asked to present their ideas as to how the redesigned play park should look.
It was opened around 10 weeks ago in time for the school summer holidays.
However, Buckie councillor Sonya Warren has raised concerns over the condition of the brand new equipment following an incident at Letterfourie which has gone on to spark a chain of fears.
She said: “I was contacted on Sunday night [September 22], saying that the zip line had completely come down and kids had been on it at the time.
“I initially thought ’Surely not, it’s brand new equipment’, but on further investigation it turned out to be the case. I phoned the council’s out of hours service to report it because obviously it's a concern if it's a failure of play equipment and there's a chain swinging about, people could get hurt quite easily on a windy day.
“They came out and had a look and confirmed it wasn’t vandalism - apparently a link in the chain had stretched and opened up and that caused the children on it at the time to fall off.
“Allegedly there were four kids on it at the time - I’ve also been told one of the children hurt their hand - but they were just little children, they're not big children and there's no weight restrictions on it. This is brand new equipment and for it to be breaking just 10 weeks or so after being installed can only be concerning.
“I mean it could have been so much worse even if there was just a couple of children on it and they fell down on top of each other, or even one child falling off down a distance, you never know what's going to happen when children fall.”
Later brought to Councillor Warren’s attention was the rotating swing, where the protective covering over the chains was splitting open, again not through vandalism or tampering.
She continued: “I raised it with the council because obviously you expect new play equipment to be durable and even if it’s getting a lot of use, on a heavy bit of equipment I would still say 10 weeks is really not a durable time.
“I would be expecting a lot more from play equipment that really is quite expensive.
“It was all brand new equipment; it was just installed and the park opened for the start of the summer holidays so there really can't have been that many hours of play on it. It has been a phenomenally popular park and well used over the summer and it's great to see. It was fantastic investment.
“Letterfourie play park should be a success story not a cause for concern.”
However, Councillor Warren stated that, going forward, she had a great many concerns about safety at the park, while voicing doubts as to whether any warranty on the new equipment would cover its apparent rapid deterioration.
She said: “I know that the council do check park equipment on a monthly basis but I would just like to know that all the installation work was done properly and that there's not going to be any more equipment failures.
“We have to be confident that the equipment is going to be durable because it's very expensive and getting funding to replace park equipment is hard. The council only have a small maintenance budget to cover all the parks in Moray so we don't really want to have to start doing maintenance work on a park that's just a few weeks old.
“I would like to think that we do have a warranty on the play equipment, especially as it’s only 10 weeks old.
“I did raise that with the officers and they said that the covers on the rotating swing are high use and probably not covered under warranty although the swing itself is covered under warranty. To my mind it should be being fixed under warranty.
“However, for two of the four swings to be showing such signs of wear already I would be questioning the durability and the quality of the product that we've received and whether it is adequate.
“If this is the state of affairs after just 10 weeks of use, you’ve got to wonder what else is going to go wrong and how serious will it be? Will a child end up badly hurt or worse?”
A Moray Council spokesperson said: “We routinely inspect play equipment, and are aware of damage at Letterfourie play park.
“The broken equipment has now been repaired, and worn covers will be remedied next week.”
The play parks set to feature in the revamp scheme were selected following an independent condition scoring exercise.
Buckie Common Good Fund have also contributed to the play park to the tune of £10,000, providing equipment primarily aimed at pre-school youngsters.
