NCB Now: Comment -- Play needs support from key departments

A prime ministerial childhood taskforce, he said, would consider "new solutions" for play to "inform the spending review".

So far, Clegg's taskforce appears to have been a damp squib. The spending review had nothing to say about play, only that central programmes for children and young people are to be sacrificed to protect the schools budget. The popular 10-year Play Strategy has effectively been torn up after less than three years.

Thus, play advocates will need to look locally. Social enterprise and volunteering schemes will be vital, but no one should be under any illusion that many play services are in jeopardy.

Play is the sort of local provision that ought to benefit from the big society, and without a lead from the Department for Education, other departments will be crucial to this becoming a reality. Providing opportunities for learning about the environment by enjoying it for play should, for example, be part of Defra's forthcoming environment white paper. Communities and Local Government should look carefully at how reform of the planning system can free up playable public space. And the planned separation of public health from the NHS should be an opportunity to progress the local strategies for outdoor play that are vital to children's physical and emotional wellbeing. If its rhetoric is to mean anything, there is still a role for the coalition government to play.