Playground Campaigner Welcomes New Investment
Clementine Wallop describes upgrade programme as 'wonderful news'
Clementine Wallop
September 17, 2025
A local woman who has been campaigning for improvements to play spaces in Hammersmith & Fulham as hailed an £8.3million upgrade programme approved by the council.
Clementine Wallop, who previously described Hammersmith and Fulham’s playgrounds as “tired and unimaginative”, said the funding is “wonderful news” for families across the borough. Upgrades include a new water play area at Ravenscourt Park and the borough’s parks seeing upgrades to enable them to “compete with the best play facilities in the country”.
Play areas on housing estates will also see investment.
Ms Wallop told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), “This is wonderful news for the families of Hammersmith and Fulham, who have for years been underserved on play, and whose play spaces are poorly maintained, unimaginative and often unsafe.
“For me, the biggest win was hearing the council say that this spend is not the end of their efforts, but the beginning of a refreshed commitment to play. With council fully engaged, Hammersmith and Fulham can hope to become a borough that people visit because of the quality of its play provision, rather than a borough residents leave to use better playgrounds elsewhere in London.”
Hammersmith and Fulham Council’s Cabinet agreed the investment at a meeting on Monday night (15 September), which is to go towards delivering “exemplar” playgrounds in locations such as Ravenscourt Park and Bishops Park.
The council manages 95 playgrounds across the borough, 33 in public parks and 62 in housing estates. A Cabinet report prepared by officers described play spaces as “a vital asset for young children”, though noted heavy use means there has been “a considerable amount of wear and tear”.
It also acknowledged that the current level of investment is “no longer achieving the desired standard” with the quality of the spaces varying.
An evaluation was commissioned last year to assess the park playgrounds, which has been used to inform the level of additional investment necessary. A strategic review is also to be carried out alongside the Housing Department on the playgrounds located on estates.
On the proposed funding, the report stated: “It is now proposed to create a consistent high quality play provision for children across the borough as part of a three-year programme using the findings from the playground assessment to inform investment decisions. This will include investment in strategically placed housing estate playgrounds in collaboration with the Housing Department, to ensure all families across the borough can readily access high quality play facilities.
“There will be a particular focus in the main parks (i.e. Ravenscourt Park and Bishops Park) to deliver facilities that will compete with the best play facilities in the country. This will include replacing the outdated padding pool in Ravenscourt Park with a water play area.”
A Hammersmith and Fulham Play Forum is also to be established to advise on the three-year programme.
When the LDRS spoke to Ms Wallop last spring she was critical of the condition of the borough’s play spaces. She said, “The problems with our playgrounds are various. They are old, they are sad, they are poorly maintained. In some cases, there are security problems and social problems with alcohol and drug abuse.”
Speaking at Monday night’s meeting, she told members, “For the last two years I have been asking you to improve play provision across the borough. I started doing this work because I was leaving the borough…in order to access better playgrounds.”
Ms Wallop referenced Kensington and Chelsea as an area which has particularly good playgrounds, later also namechecking Tower Hamlets and Hackney.
She continued, “I thought not only is this about my children and the play spaces that they have but there’s an economic story here as well. You talk about yourselves as a council that cares about small business, that cares about independent café owners, and I was taking my money up to K&C and spending it there, or taking it across to Ealing because the playgrounds here were old.”
On her calls for the council to dedicate greater attention to its play spaces, Ms Wallop said, “Your paper is answering that. Thank you very, very much. The difference that this makes to children’s mental health, children’s physical health, to maternal mental health, is enormous.”
Ben Lynch - Local Democracy Reporter