Turning It All Starts With Play! into action

ONE YEAR ON

STRATEGY

Play England launched its 10-year strategy, It All Starts With Play!, at the House of Commons on 13 May 2025. One year on, progress has been made across Parliament, policy, investment, evidence, education and the play sector. But the central task remains unfinished: creating the national system needed to restore a play-based childhood for all children by 2035

When Play England launched It All Starts With Play!, it set out a clear vision: a society where all children have the freedom to play. Its mission is to make play a normal, accepted, and visible part of everyday life again. Its objective is to restore a play-based childhood for all children in England by 2035. That 10-year horizon was deliberate. The decline in children’s freedom to play has taken place over several generations. It will not be reversed through one funding announcement, new playgrounds or one policy change. Play is not a luxury, reward or optional extra. Nor should it be valued only because it contributes to health, learning or physical activity. Play matters in its own right. It is freely chosen, personally directed and intrinsically motivated. It is how children experience childhood.

The strategy therefore focuses on creating the conditions in which play can happen. It’s centred on Lott’s STAR framework, which has four requirements: Space, Time, Acceptance and Rights. Delivery is organised through four interconnected priorities: Spaces, Skills, Systems and Society.

Rebuilding a national voice for play

One of the clearest achievements of the first year has been the establishment of the All- Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Play.

The APPG held its inaugural meeting and Annual General Meeting on 2 September 2025. Parliamentarians elected the group’s officers and considered the history and impact of the original APPG on Play, Play England’s new 10-year strategy, the Raising the Nation Play Commission’s final report, progress on Play Sufficiency legislation and the group’s forward programme.

Since then, it has held seven further meetings, creating a regular parliamentary forum through which MPs, peers, national organisations, practitioners, and children can examine the barriers restricting play. Each focused on a distinct part of the national play agenda:

29 October 2025: Play Sufficiency in policy and practice, including the proposed legislative amendments and how a statutory duty could operate locally.

10 December 2025: Playgrounds and the play industry, including inequalities across England’s 34,000 playgrounds, the £18 million government investment and the development of Playces.

21 January 2026: Play in early years and schools, including the campaign to make learning through play statutory at Key Stage 1 and the wider case for Play Sufficiency in education. 25 February 2026: Adventure playgrounds and playwork, examining their history, social value and sustainability, alongside the Playwork National Occupational Standards.

18 March 2026: Play Well: Health Play Services, focused on therapeutic play, specialist health play services and the workforce supporting children across the NHS.

10 June 2026: The International Day of Play and the Home Nations, bringing together the national play organisations from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland alongside updates on National Week of Play and Playday.

8 July 2026: Digital play and social media, considering the opportunities and risks of digital play, online safety, children’s rights and international approaches to social media regulation.

Children need to be able to play throughout the places where they live: in streets, estates, parks, green spaces, school grounds, and the wider public realm

Together, the eight sessions have created a regular parliamentary forum connecting play with planning, education, health, workforce development, digital policy, public investment and children’s rights. The breadth of the programme reflects the central argument of It All Starts With Play! - play cannot be confined to a single service, setting or government department.

This matters because play does not fit neatly within a single government department. Decisions about childhood are made through planning, housing, transport, education, health, public space, local government and digital policy. The APPG helps connect those agendas and keeps children’s right to play visible and vibrant within Parliament.

Play England also gave oral evidence to the Culture, Media, and Sport Committee’s State of Play inquiry on the same day as the APPG’s inaugural meeting. The evidence focused on the decline of staffed adventure playgrounds, the loss of playwork capacity and the need to treat play as part of England’s social infrastructure. It also set out the STAR framework and the case for a new National Play Strategy, underpinned by Play Sufficiency legislation and backed by £125m per year.

Turning evidence into investment

The most visible funding development was the Government’s announcement of £18 million for playgrounds in the November 2025 Budget. The package consists of £16 million of capital funding and £2 million of revenue support. It is expected to improve up to 200 playgrounds in areas of greatest need and represents the first national government commitment of its kind since the 2008 National Play Strategy.

Play England’s campaigning, parliamentary engagement and evidence contributed to securing that investment. But £18 million cannot reverse more than a decade of closures, declining maintenance budgets, and unequal provision. It should be treated as a first step and the basis for a sustained national programme, not as the job completed. Evidence is also being strengthened through Playces, developed by Play England and the University of Sheffield. Playces has mapped almost 34,000 playgrounds and uses data on child population, deprivation, distance, number, and size to show where access is weakest. Its findings demonstrate why simply counting playgrounds is inadequate. Some communities, particularly those experiencing higher levels of deprivation, have fewer, smaller, and more distant play spaces.

The platform has already helped inform the Government’s approach to the £18 million Playground fund. Its longer-term purpose is to give national and local decision-makers a stronger basis for assessing Play Sufficiency, targeting investment, and understanding inequalities.

Investment must follow need, rather than the ability of individual communities to make the loudest case.

Changing planning policy

The strategy recognises that playground investment alone will not restore children’s freedom to play. Children need to be able to play throughout the places where they live: in streets, estates, parks, green spaces, school grounds, and the wider public realm.

The December 2024 National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) introduced protection for “formal play spaces”. That was an important manifesto win secured before the strategy’s formal launch, but it covered only one part of the problem.

In March 2026, Play England responded to the Government’s proposed reforms to the NPPF and its new Design and Placemaking Planning Practice Guidance (DPPPG). The response called for children’s needs to be embedded across planning policy, including informal play, playable neighbourhoods, safe access, and meaningful participation by children. This work built on New Clause 82 to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which proposed a Play Sufficiency duty and secured support from 72 MPs. Although the Government did not accept the legislative amendment, it committed to strengthening national planning policy and guidance.

The new NPPF must follow through on that commitment. Children should not continue to be largely invisible within decisions that shape the places in which they grow up.

Supporting skills and provision

The strategy’s Skills priority recognises that good play opportunities depend on people as well as physical spaces.

Playwork is a skilled profession. Playworkers create and protect environments in which children can direct their own play, encounter challenge, develop relationships and shape the space around them.

During spring 2026, the UK Playwork National Occupational Standards (NOS) Consortium consulted on revised standards for the profession. Play England worked alongside Play Wales, Play Scotland, PlayBoard Northern Ireland and the Playwork Foundation on this UK-wide process.

The standards provide an important foundation, but professional recognition must be matched by education, qualifications, career routes and investment. England cannot rebuild staffed play provision without rebuilding the workforce that sustains it.

Adventure playgrounds have also moved back onto the national agenda.

In February 2026, the £500,000 National Adventure Playground Fund was launched to support staffed adventure playgrounds through unrestricted grants of between £20,000 and £50,000, alongside organisational support and peer learning.

Adventure playgrounds offer something that conventional fixed playgrounds cannot. They are child-shaped community spaces where skilled playworkers support children to build, change, experiment, take proportionate risks and develop a strong sense of ownership.

The fund provides direct help to some of England’s remaining adventure playgrounds. It also reinforces the case for a long-term national approach to protecting and expanding this provision.

Play in schools

The strategy has also been translated into a significant strategic collaboration with the Youth Sport Trust, bringing together Play England’s rights-based expertise in children’s play and the Youth Sport Trust’s national reach and experience of working with schools.

The partnership was reflected in the APPG’s January 2026 session on play in early years and schools, where the Youth Sport Trust contributed alongside OPAL, Positive Playtime, teachers and other education specialists.

In July 2026, Play England and the Youth Sport Trust jointly published More Play. Better Learning, supported by a rapid evidence review led by Dr Wendy Russell and Ludicology. The report makes the case for embedding Play Sufficiency across England’s primary, secondary and special schools and Alternative Provision. It does not argue that play should simply become another adult-directed teaching technique. It calls for schools to provide sufficient space and time for freely chosen play, build adult understanding and acceptance, and adopt rights-informed practice. Its recommendations include protecting breaktimes, improving school grounds, strengthening workforce development and ensuring that play is properly recognised in national policy, inspection and school improvement.

Publication is the beginning rather than the end of this work. Play England and the Youth Sport Trust will now work with schools to develop practical tools to embed Play Sufficiency within everyday school practice and the Youth Sport Trust’s Well Schools movement.

Schools cannot deliver the whole solution, but they are one of the few places reached by almost every child. Play Sufficiency in schools must therefore form part of any credible National Play Strategy.

Schools cannot deliver the whole solution, but they are one of the few places reached by almost every child

From momentum to a national system

Taken together, these developments show movement across each of the strategy’s four priorities.

There has been progress on Spaces, through the playground fund, Playces and planning reform.

There has been progress on Skills, through the Playwork National Occupational Standards and renewed attention to the playwork profession.

There has been progress on Systems, through the APPG, parliamentary evidence and the growing political case for Play Sufficiency.

There has been progress on Society, through work with schools, parents, communities, the Home Nations and organisations far beyond the traditional play sector.

But momentum is not the same as a national system. England still has no minister with clear responsibility for play, no cross-government National Play Strategy, no statutory duty requiring local authorities to assess and secure sufficient play opportunities, and no sustainable national funding settlement.

On 20 July 2026, Play England wrote to Prime Minister Andy Burnham calling on the Government to finish the work begun by the 2008 National Play Strategy. The letter called for a new cross-government strategy, Play Sufficiency legislation and investment of £125 million a year - which is just 20p per child, per week!

The £18 million playground fund provides a starting point. The next step is to move from isolated initiatives to a coherent national commitment covering the spaces, workforce, provision and public systems that support children’s play.

The National Play Conference

That next phase will be the focus of the inaugural National Play Conference, being delivered by Play England and SAPCA at the University of Warwick on 8 and 9 October 2026.

Play England’s AGM and a playwork and workforce summit, followed by the inaugural National Play Awards will take place on Thursday 8 October. The main conference will follow on Friday 9 October.

Grounded in It All Starts With Play! the conference will explore how we create the conditions children need to play: places and spaces that welcome play; skills that enable and support play; systems that protect children’s right to play; and a society where play is accepted as a normal part of everyday life. The conference will connect planning, design, construction and play provision with policy, local government, health, education and community leadership, creating a shared agenda for accessible and inclusive play, so that every child has the space, time, acceptance and rights they need to play.

The conference will provide a unique national forum for everyone involved in creating, enabling and advocating for play, from designers, playworkers, contractors, manufacturers and local authorities to educators, playground operators and policymakers.

The conference is an opportunity to take stock, connect the work already under way and agree how the sector can turn growing political attention into lasting change. Bookings are now open!

Eugene Minogue, Executive Director of Play England, said: “One year on, the direction of travel is clear. We have established a parliamentary voice for play, helped secure the first national playground investment since 2008, strengthened the evidence base, supported the playwork profession and put Play Sufficiency firmly into debates about planning and education. But we should not confuse progress with success.

“Children’s freedom to play is still restricted by traffic, disappearing space, adult intolerance, unequal investment and public systems that rarely consider their needs. Our strategy runs to 2035 because this requires a generational change. The task now is to turn political interest and individual projects into a proper national system: a new National Play Strategy, underpinned by a Play Sufficiency duty and backed by sustained investment of £125 million a year. The first year has shown what is possible. The National Play Conference in October must help us decide what we do next, together, and then get on with it.”