It’s all child’s play for Colyford youngsters

Children from Colyford have chosen the design for an eagerly anticipated play area in the village.

Despite the size of Colyford - 707 people are on the electoral roll - it doesn’t have a public play area, but it will soon.

East Devon District Council and Colyton Parish Council have been working closely together to spend £24,000 on creating the play area. A total of £22,300 of this money has been contributed by developers through Section 106 funding for play which is given for every new home created in the parish. This is collected by East Devon District Council, who choose to involve the community in how it spends this money. The remaining £1,700 has come from the parish council.

Children from the village were asked to come up with ideas for what they wanted to be able to do in the play area and a design brief was developed. Three companies put forward designs based on the activities that the children were asking for and the youngsters voted for their favourite at a free family theatre event at the Memorial Hall. The winning design was from LarsLaj.

Colyton Parish Council (which includes Colyford) has worked hard and taken more than three years trying to identify a site to provide a play area in the village itself. They explored all sorts of options that weren’t possible for one reason or another, but now thanks to the generosity of a local family, the Pady’s, a solution has been found and the new play area will soon be put in next to Colyton Grammar School.

The design has been ratified by both councils.

Cllr Iain Chubb, East Devon District Council’s Cabinet Member for the Environment, said: “I’m always delighted to see play areas go in around the district that the local children and young people have helped design and then chosen. We have been using this approach since 2008, working in partnership with town and parish councils and involving the local community, and it always ends up with great results.”

Cllr Andrew Parr, Chairman of Colyton Parish Council, said: “Colyton Parish Council are very pleased that at last the children of Colyford have got a play area. It has taken several years to achieve this and we are very grateful to the Pady family for making the land available and also to EDDC for the funding through the S106 scheme.”