£38,000 Down the Slide – a Quick Blog in the Park

Caroline Millar counts the cost to Hackney Council of failing to consult users about play equipment.

Picture a Park

Picture a park in a part of London thronged with under fives. Rumour has it that this part of London has the highest birth rate in Europe and it is certainly true that you cannot walk down the main shopping street without having to negotiate double, and even triple, buggies. In this park there is a very well used and very well-loved playground for under eights. Now imagine the parents turning up with their offspring to discover that the playground has been closed and the three most popular bits of old, shabby but nevertheless well-designed wooden equipment have been unceremoniously ripped out and replaced with two much smaller, rather ugly and uninspiring metal climbing frames.

Citizens Aroused

Now picture the next meeting of the park User Group (a normally staid affair attended by a well-meaning, loyal and public minded group of generally older dog walkers, grandparents and tree-lovers).

Suddenly it is standing room only. Small children are hurtling around our feet. Stroppy parents are demanding to know how this happened without anyone being informed or asked for their opinion. Why has the old equipment gone? Why the hideous “Big Meccano” which achieves the quite spectacular feat of being both very boring and rather dangerous. Parents compete to enumerate the times their children have been injured and lament the loss of the slide that you could take a tiny child down on your knee and the little high-up house where their toddlers liked to hide and have tea parties. Why did no-one ask the parents what their children wanted before they destroyed the playground where some of these parents and their children spent several hours a week?

Now the playground is empty most of the time and finding a decent playground means a half hour walk into the next borough. This unannounced change has had a major impact on these families. And everybody wants wood not metal.

The Council Challenged

The User Group challenges the Council. The Council are a bit put out. They thought they were doing us all a favour. Surely we would welcome some lovely shiny new equipment. And they tell us there was a consultation. But the User Group knows this took the form of the man from the company that sold the equipment to the Council showing some pictures of the equipment which had already been procured to whoever was in the park between 9am and 11am on a very cold Saturday morning in early January (i.e almost no-one).

The Decision Made: Tear it Down and Start Again

A public meeting is called. To his credit, Mr Holmes, the man from the Council admits that they got it wrong and appears to commit to taking it out and starting from scratch. He promises to return the next weekend with some new ideas for discussion. He sets up a series of further meetings with users in the park. He puts up posters. He and his team walk around the play area listening to anyone who wants to talk to him. They watch the children playing. In fact, as a consultation both on the grass and at its roots goes, it is pretty exemplary.

The Lesson Learnt?

But what a pity they did not do this all in the first place. By failing to find out what people liked about the old equipment or what they want from new equipment they ended up with a white elephant, a white elephant which cost over £35K to procure and install.

Millions More to Spend – Wisely and Well?
The same park now has several millions of council tax payers’ money and Heritage Lottery Funding to spend over the next few years. Let’s hope they have learned a few lessons before they get it wrong on an even grander scale.

The M-A-C partnership has wide experience of helping organisations talk to their users in the right way and at the right time about the right things. You can contact Caroline Millar here.