Play area total close to letting the games begin
PLANS to overhaul the Sworder’s Field play area are another step closer to completion thanks to a £5,000 cash boost from East Herts District Council and Stansted Airport’s owner BAA.
The £50,000 scheme, championed by Bishop’s Stortford town councillor Janice Elliott, will see six new pieces of equipment – including four specially tailored for disabled children – built at the playground off The Causeway.
This week’s joint grant has been further boosted by the town council, whose finance and general purposes committee has put £2,750 towards the revamp. The town’s youth council has provided an additional £1,000.
Cllr Elliott’s project now has well over £40,000 in the kitty – and if her colleagues approve an extra £6,279.75 donation at their next full meeting, it will have smashed its target.
Since the plans were first proposed, money has been flooding in from all corners of the community. Also among those to have contributed are North Street clothing shop White Stuff and Waitrose. The costs have also been kept down by gifts of free materials and labour, while individual donations and charity events have helped to swell the scheme’s coffers.
To make way for the new equipment, several little-used items will be removed. There are also plans to lay down a ‘wet pour’ safety surface around it.
Once the kit is in place, Cllr Elliott hopes to build a safety fence around the paddling pool area across the Stort, which would stop children from playing too close to the riverbank. This second phase will cost just over £9,300, a sum the town council has said it cannot afford, but the mother-of-two is hoping to raise the money from yet more grants and donations.
She said: “As far as fund-raising for the new equipment goes, it could be a case of ‘job done’ by the end of February if the council says yes [to the £6,279.75].”
The fence is still an ongoing thing. I’ve got permission from the town council, who own the land, to go for it – but there are issues like planning permission so there are a still few more obstacles there.”
Under a separate initiative, Sworder’s Field’s custodian the Brazier Trust is applying for a £7,500 grant to buy and install a seventh piece of equipment at the popular town centre site. It will be told whether the bid has succeeded on January 31.
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