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It's hardly surprising we're so crap at sports. 
In Wales, we have no idea just how many playing fields have been lost; there is no legislation in force to monitor the situation. At present, we are pressing the Welsh Assembly to monitor the situation and to tighten the laws that govern the sell-offs.
In England over the last 13 years, according to figures quoted by Sports Minister Richard Caborn, nearly 34,000 sports pitches across England have disappeared.
In a study carried out for National Play Day in August 2005, the National Children’s Bureau found that children said that poor provision of play spaces, and the fear that the outdoor world is unsafe, leads them to stay indoors. Other supporting facts and figures produced at this time include (UK figures):
• Fears for children’s safety have increased. The radius around the home in which children are allowed to roam has shrunk to a ninth of what it was in 1970. In 1971, 80 per cent of seven- and eight-year-olds walked to school alone, in 1990 the figure had fallen to 9 per cent.
• For every acre of play space there are 80 acres of golf club space.
• Playing fields have been lost at a rate of one a day in the last eight years.
Children learn through play and although there is a place for ‘organised’ games and sporting facilities, we need to keep the ‘ordinary’ community playing fields in order for children to express imaginative ways of play and communication, they need to be able to play freely and safely, to make up their own games, as one child put it “Playing is what I do when nobody is bossing me around”
Children have a right to play.
Lynne Hayes, Save Open Spaces.
In Wales, we have no idea just how many playing fields have been lost; there is no legislation in force to monitor the situation. At present, we are pressing the Welsh Assembly to monitor the situation and to tighten the laws that govern the sell-offs.
In England over the last 13 years, according to figures quoted by Sports Minister Richard Caborn, nearly 34,000 sports pitches across England have disappeared.
In a study carried out for National Play Day in August 2005, the National Children’s Bureau found that children said that poor provision of play spaces, and the fear that the outdoor world is unsafe, leads them to stay indoors. Other supporting facts and figures produced at this time include (UK figures):
• Fears for children’s safety have increased. The radius around the home in which children are allowed to roam has shrunk to a ninth of what it was in 1970. In 1971, 80 per cent of seven- and eight-year-olds walked to school alone, in 1990 the figure had fallen to 9 per cent.
• For every acre of play space there are 80 acres of golf club space.
• Playing fields have been lost at a rate of one a day in the last eight years.
Children learn through play and although there is a place for ‘organised’ games and sporting facilities, we need to keep the ‘ordinary’ community playing fields in order for children to express imaginative ways of play and communication, they need to be able to play freely and safely, to make up their own games, as one child put it “Playing is what I do when nobody is bossing me around”
Children have a right to play.
Lynne Hayes, Save Open Spaces.
