Marsh Green's Worn-Out Play Area Gets a Fresh Start

Marsh Green is the third West Kent playground to get a council-funded rebuild this year that we've covered, after Swanley's Cherry Avenue and Hilda May play areas - but unlike those two, which leaned on National Lottery grants, this one was paid for entirely through developer money. Edenbridge Town Council has replaced the hamlet's play area at Marsh Green, with children from the local pre-school called in to give the new equipment its first real test run on opening day, 7 October.

The old equipment hadn't failed suddenly - it had been flagged years in advance. The council's 30-year maintenance plan had already identified it as nearing the end of its safe working life, which is what put the replacement on the list in the first place rather than it being a reactive fix. The new kit was designed and installed by KOMPAN, and the whole project was funded through the town council's Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) pot - money collected from developers building nearby, ring-fenced for exactly this kind of local infrastructure, rather than drawn from council tax or needing a National Lottery bid.

Council Chair Cllr Angela Baker cut the ribbon on the day. "The new playground is a great improvement on the old play area, with fresh, exciting equipment and a much more inviting space for local children to play, explore and burn off some energy," she said.

It's a modest scheme next to the big regeneration projects making headlines elsewhere in the district, and there's no single eye-catching figure attached to it the way there is with, say, a leisure centre rebuild. But CIL-funded replacements like this are quietly becoming the more common route for small parish and town councils to renew ageing play equipment, compared with the grant applications bigger projects like Swanley's have relied on - worth watching as more of West Kent's playgrounds built in the same era start reaching the end of their own 30-year clocks.

Source: Edenbridge Town Council