Sorry to go off on a limb a little, but in response to Janees comment about the social mix of the playground being a unique lost feature, I wanted to flag up the excellent teen youth club we have in the borough.

Caius House (pronounced keys) opened about 18 months ago. It's 50p an evening and has excellent new music/sports/creative facilities. Many people don't realise it exists. It's a charity rather than council run, but certainly worth of support.

http://www.caiushouse.org

atbattersea wrote:

supergirl wrote:BUT the old adventure playground (the one with people supervising) was demolished long before Go Ape cane into the picture.

The other issue was, of course, that the Council was seriously proposing a charge for using the old adventure playground, and this was opposed by local people.

I remember and the consensus was to either give a discount to WW residents or to only charge non WW residents.

I do not remember them promising a tree top so wont really comment.
it s a difficult situation and bound to make some people unhappy but where do you suggest Go Ape to go?

supergirl wrote:BUT the old adventure playground (the one with people supervising) was demolished long before Go Ape cane into the picture.

See my earlier post on this issue. The Council must have had the GoApe commercialisation in mind when they started the redevelopment of the site, because part of the "promise" was a tree top walkway - they just forgot to tell us that this would be a commercial venture (I'm sure it just slipped their minds).

The other issue was, of course, that the Council was seriously proposing a charge for using the old adventure playground, and this was opposed by local people.

@ActuallyDad: ludicrous idea i m afraid and impossible to manage. So many people uses the playgrounds and would not be able to afford £1 per kids. Yes in our area some people are wealthy but loads are not and uses the playgrounds.
If the council was to do something like the only fair way to do it would to charge the households depending the council tax band they are paying (so those on HB, lowest bands or tax credits, etc) would be excluded.

In regards to Go Ape, our family absolutely love it so i m glad there is now one near us. However i havent been since it opened so cant comment yet on the loss of playground.
BUT the old adventure playground (the one with people supervising) was demolished long before Go Ape cane into the picture. I remember a thread on this very website around 2009/2010 where people discussed the possibility ofcharging NON wandsworth residents for using the facility.

Annabel: if you remember the thread could you please link it? I cant find it myself. Thanks a lot.

I think we should charge for ALL play grounds - but a nominal amount, maybe £1 per kid, with all the money going to improve them.

I am always amazed at how old, tatty and packed all our playgrounds are. Visit your friends outside London and be amazed at how their kids don't queue for swings. I would certainly be happy to contribute £1 for each time my kids use the playground if the money went to improving them. Given that we have very low council tax, and that most people around here are wealthy, and that the play grounds really need investment, I think it's a good idea.

(PS I don't know enough about where the go-ape play ground is to comment on the Guardian piece sorry)

firsttimerSW11 wrote:There is a cost to Go Ape which is no different than the cost of going Battersea Park zoo - I don't really see the difference?

The cost of Battersea Park Zoo for a child is £6.95 and the price of GoApe is as stated above. I take it that you can see the difference in that?

If you mean that you can't see the difference between one set of privatisation and another, you probably have a point there, but I think objecting to the zoo is shutting the stable door long, long after the horse has bolted. The privatisation of the playgrounds and one o'clock club recent.

I think the thing we need to bear in mind is that there is essentially no control over what Wandsworth Council can do on this front - they can just keep on hiving off parts of the park in support of their "money" argument.

Look at a slightly different scenarios: privatising a large section of Falcon Park with an all weather pitch, or the almost full closure of Battersea Park to accommodate Formula-E (the latest on this is that the Council has gone from talking about a limited five year deal, to openly proposing an ongoing relationship, and making the temporary tarmacking permanent - breaking the promises they made to the public and the Heritage Lottery Fund).

Astolat, Wandsworth are amazing compared to Lambeth...Having just moved from one to the other, I'm almost tempted to move back! Double the council tax isn't the half of it.

I take everything Lucy Mangan says with a pinch of salt. She is incredibly one dimensional in her writing which is fine - I relish opinions from both sides of the spectrum - but she never, EVER, gives a balanced view point.
Battersea Park play area is lovely, no way is it a case of the rich kids in Go Ape and the poor kids in the rest. All kids play in the general playground. There is a cost to Go Ape which is no different than the cost of going Battersea Park zoo - I don't really see the difference?

Thanks for the explanation, my kids are young and I was looking forward to them being able to play in the adventure playground. But I was thinking 8-12 not teenagers.

I really dislike Wandsworth council. We could support much higher council tax and make the borough significantly better, especially for those who can't afford private costs.

I struggle to see Go Ape lasting as it is, the prices seem too high for an activity that will only be really good for a short part of the year.

I agree, I think it was a very sad and short sighted loss to the community. I understand about spending cuts but the axe shouldn't have fallen here.

atbattersea makes a lot of very good points. I would add a couple of more. The Adventure Playground was not a commercially built construction and gave opportunities for teenagers to help in the building. This also applied to the Adventure Playground at York Gardens (also destroyed). Both of these adventure playgrounds served estates which house the most deprived families in the borough, living in high rise flats with limited facilities for outdoor activity.

One of the striking things about Battersea Park Adventure was the social mix of those who used it. Certainly, one of the young people who used York Gardens Adventure Playground (actually the one which preceded it) told me that it was that influence which turned him from a life of crime to a responsible, tax paying family man - his whole family had been involved in crime and his younger brother was murdered in a gang fight. What hope would he have had without the play leaders' influence?

I don't really like Lucy Mangan to start off with, and she has made a real pig's ear of the facts here, but the underlying point she is making is correct: the parks are being privatised.

The story of the adventure playground is this: for many years there was a very good, free, adventure playground in Battersea Park. Adjacent to it was a more junior level playground for younger children, and next to that was the One O'clock club for the under fives. Several years ago Wandsworth Council proposed that they should charge an entry fee for the adventure playground - because they had staff on site, and had to maintain it. This led to many protests from the local community (so whatever anyone else here thinks, people in the locality made it known that they thought that a free adventure playground was correct).

Wandsworth Council then announced that they would tear down the old adventure playground and build a new, more junior (and less demanding) facility. This would also lead to the redundancy of the adventure playground staff (who incidentally monitored faults in the junior playground too).

This led to yet more protests, and even an occupation of the adventure playground. But, Wandsworth Council pressed ahead and demolished the old adventure playground. As anyone who has had any dealings with the Council should know, it generally does what it likes, following the "money" argument, regardless of local objections.

However, the promise at the time was a new adventure playground, aimed at a younger audience. This was to be completed in three stages: the first we had (notice I wrote "had", rather than "have"), the second was rather vague, but involved developing the other land on the adventure playground site with more facilities, and the third stage was a lovely tree-top walkway. The inference seemed to be, because Wandsworth Council did not want to pay staff (ie the old adventure playground had been demolished with this justification), all of these facilities would be free.

So, the first stage of the new adventure playground was built. Contemporaneously with this the One O'clock club was shut down. Fairly shortly thereafter it was announced that GoApe would be building a commercial tree-top walkway. Part of this development would mean taking down the free zip wire in the adventure playground and relocating it.

Er, hold on, we seem to have moved on to stage three, which has now been commercialised, forgotten about stage two and partially dismantled stage one. Now, a couple of years later, we have no space for the stage two development, probably no space for the zip wire to be relocated (it is certainly not currently in place) and the One O'clock club has been turned into a cafe and crazy golf site. So, overall, Lucy Mangan is correct in that there has been substantial privatisation of these public play facilities in Battersea Park.

There is also the issue of the small football pitch/basketball court in the adventure playground, which may be inaccessible (haven't really checked since GoApe opened).

With the removal of the adventure playground staff the number of faults in the junior playground immediately rose, with some components being out of action for extended periods.

As to GoApe itself - I do feel a little uncomfortable having kids running about above my head while I'm sitting around watching my son playing. And I do wonder whether the financial outlay they have made can actually be recouped, and what happens if it cannot. This is a new sort of facility for them, very different to their other sites.

I can only imagine that all the mothers on this thread have younger children because the old playground was one of the few that offered something for young teenagers. Perhaps this video will give you an idea of what the author is talking about. I for one miss the old playground and its unique atmosphere very much and my children, who remember the old one, refuse to go to it (youngest 11). It is no longer an adventure playground but just a normal playground with nothing challenging for 8's and up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFIpiCDiV0w

The Article is completely wrong so she can't have been - either before or since Go Ape and the putting/cafe were built. It's very irresponsible and lazy journalism.

The Adventure playground hasn't been razed to the ground, it is still there, with all the same equipment it used to have and it is still completely free for anyone to use. We have been irregular visitors to that playground for several years and took the kids there twice over the Xmas period.

I wonder if the writer of the Guardian article has actually been as I cannot relate to it at all. I was there just the other day and my children played for hours in the adventure playground. Whilst occasionally we noticed someone climbing above them within the trees it didn't effect their play in the slightest.
Oh and the reason we were able to stay for hours was because we refuelled with a pizza at the new cafe!

Is the park the same as it was a few months ago? When it says they bulldozed the adventure playground is that the redevelopment a couple of years ago or have they bulldozed the stuff that was there? I thought what was there was good and can't remember what it replaced ( my kids were too young).

I'm just trying to figure out what is true, did they get rid of great public facilities to build something private or did they just build a private thing next to the public stuff. I had thought the latter but the guardian seems to think otherwise.