Playgrounds: Capital Investment

Mr. Hepburn
To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how much capital funding was allocated to playgrounds in (a) Jarrow constituency, (b) South Tyneside, (c) the north-east and (d) England in each year since 1997.

Beverley Hughes
The Government do not collect statistics on or otherwise monitor how much capital is spent on playgrounds by local authorities. We do not separately identify individual capital grants that finance capital expenditure. Only the total used to finance expenditure in a year is collected.

In the Children's Plan, we recently announced £190 million capital funding to be spent on open-access, free play environments. Every local authority in England will receive funding by 2010-11. In addition, local authorities already receive substantial funding to support maintenance of public space. BIG lottery has just invested £124 million to 2010-11 to support play in local authorities.