Parents’ anger at ongoing playground closure

Parents in a Herefordshire town are angry that a children’s playground has been shut for five months without explanation.

A petition calling on landlord Citizen Housing to reopen the playground, at the foot of Oak Road, Credenhill west of Hereford, has already drawn over 200 signatures.

This claims Citizen has said they “don’t have the required expertise for maintenance works so have closed all playgrounds due to the safety of the public”.

Local resident Sarah Lewis said the facility was closed without warning in September, adding: “My sons played here, but now my granddaughter is upset at being locked out.

“Playgrounds are important for children’s health and well-being,” she said. “They could have upgraded the playground earlier, and so avoided having to close it. They have the money – there’s no excuse.”

Credenhill Parish Council backs the residents’ call. Its clerk Lee Harper-Smith said that before the playground problem there had been an issue with dog waste bags not being emptied from a neighbouring dog exercise area, which had also taken some time to resolve with Citizen.

Tenants and homeowners in the former military housing estate pay a management fee to the company, which posted an operating surplus in 2023 of £23 million, to look after public areas of the estate.

Mr Harper-Smith added that the parish council, which “has a duty of care to our residents”, has even passed on to Citizen details of safety inspectors and of a grant scheme which could pay to replace missing equipment or even upgrade the whole playground.

Director of building safety at Citizen Ted Malkin said: “The health and safety of our customers is of upmost priority to us at Citizen.

“We carry out regular inspections of our playgrounds to make sure they are safe and unfortunately issues were found at the site near Oak Road in Hereford [sic] and it needed to be closed.

“We were unable to carry out the immediate repairs required to make the playground safe, however we have procured Sovereign Playgrounds who will inspect the site this month and will then carry out repairs as soon as possible.

“We’re sorry for any inconvenience this has caused.”