FUNDING has been set aside by Monmouthshire council to carry out further upgrades to play areas after 95 were previously rated as ‘poor.’

A budget of £128,000 has been created, funded by an All Wales Play Opportunities Grant from the Welsh Government, to carry out the improvements.

The council is proposing to spend £100,000 of this on upgrading playgrounds, with the remaining £28,000 on other priorities in its play action plan.

An independent assessment of 110 council play areas in the county, carried out in 2019, revealed that just three offered a good standard of play value.

Twelve offered an adequate standard and the remaining 95 were ranked as poor.

Since then, investments in play areas at The Bayfield and The Danes in Chepstow and at Chippenham village green in Monmouth have brought these to a good standard.

Further improvements are also planned to improve play areas at King’s Fee, Goldwire Lane and Hendre Close in Monmouth.

Out of the £100,000 allocation, £34,000 will be set aside to upgrade Clydach Recreation Ground and £30,000 has been allocated for Belgrave Park in Abergavenny.

Funding of £10,000 has been allocated for each of Dingestow Playing Field and Garden City, Chepstow.

A site at Cadoc Close, Caerwent, will be turned into a community nature space with funding of £8,000, while the same amount has been allocated to upgrade a play area at Trewen, Caerwent.

Monmouthshire County Council said the works will be commissioned to start “as soon as possible”.

“In 2019 the council’s 110 play areas were assessed for the level of play value offered to children across the county and this revealed that there is work to be done to improve the quality of experience that children receive when using many fixed play sites in Monmouthshire,” a council spokeswoman said.

“A lot of work has been done already to address this in certain localities and the proposals contained in the report are a continuation of that work.”

A council report says new play areas provided at the Kingswood Gate development in Monmouth are also expected to be of a good standard.

Explaining the reasons for allocating the funding, the report says: “This is a continuation of the council’s planned investment to achieve significant community benefits, but there needs to be an approved budget in place to enable the necessary orders to be processed.”

A decision to approve the funding was made on Wednesday, November 10.