Fun and exciting opportunities to play are at the heart of a happy, healthy and enjoyable childhood. Better outdoor play opportunities are good for children, good for families and good for communities.

Time and space to play safely is integral to delivering our children's plan ambition to make England the best country in the world for children and young people to grow up in—it is vital to children's physical, emotional, social and educational development.

Today, with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, I am delighted to publish the first national play strategy for England, backed by the children's plan investment of £235 million. This investment will mean that every residential area has a variety of high-quality places for all children to play safely, and free of charge.

An accelerated roll-out of our new investment will mean that children across the country will be able to benefit sooner from improved play sites, and £30 million due to be spent in 2010-11 will now be brought forward to 2009-10 as part of Government action to support the country during the economic downturn. This means that every local authority will have been offered at least £l million capital funding by April 2009, which they can begin spending in line with local plans and supported by our national delivery partner, Play England.

The strategy sets out in more detail how we will deliver our capital investment programme from 2008 to 2011 so that up to 3,500 new and refurbished play sites and 30 large staffed adventure playgrounds will be built to reflect the needs of children, parents and the local community.

The Government's action is a direct response to demands from children, young people and their families for better play facilities in every area. In April, our "Fair Play" consultation set out an ambitious range of proposals to make a reality of our vision for world-class play opportunities.

This consultation attracted an overwhelming response, with 9,400 children and young people letting us know how they would like Government to support their play—12 per cent. of these responses came from disabled children, reinforcing the need to do even more to make sure that we make play accessible for all children, regardless of their circumstances.

The enthusiastic support for our proposals in the "Fair Play" consultation underpins the play strategy. The play strategy sets out Government's commitment to:

put children and young people's views at the heart of the design and development of local neighbourhoods—and their consultation as a central requirement of new investment in local play areas;

help local authorities deliver the exciting play spaces that children want;

inform parents and children about local play opportunities;

improve access for disabled children so that they can benefit fully from our investment in play facilities;

put in place clear requirements on school capital programmes around outdoor play and recreational spaces;

put children's play needs at the heart of new residential and social housing developments;

ensure children are safe when they travel around and play in their neighbourhoods, including by working with the third sector and community policing to improve the supervision of children playing;

invest in the workforce who support and supervise play—enabling 4,000 playworkers to achieve a level 3 play work qualification by 2011;

invest £1.5 million in third sector-run adventure playgrounds and provide funding to help build third sector infrastructure; and

introduce a new national indicator for play from 2009 for local authorities, which will measure children satisfaction with parks and play areas.

The first new outdoor play areas are already being built across the country. We want to maintain this momentum, making sure that every local authority works to improve levels of satisfaction that communities have with their local provision.

As a result of our investment and the implementation of this play strategy, led locally by children's trusts, we want at least 100,000 more children to tell us every year that their local play areas and parks are good or very good. Increasing levels of satisfaction in every local authority will show us that we are successful in developing more child-friendly communities, which value children's play and provide better environments for children and young people to enjoy.

We know that we can only achieve our vision for play in 2020 by working in partnership with local and national delivery partners, including the third sector, and by putting children, young people and their parents at the heart of the design and development of neighbourhood provision.

We hope to build on the huge interest and engagement with our consultation earlier this year to deliver the improvement in local facilities that every family wants.

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