The irony of scrapping the play strategy to help meet the budget deficit is that it did not commit the government to significant expenditure after the end of the capital programme in March. Terminating the relatively minor national contracts and the small government unit that would have delivered the remaining seven years of the strategy has not helped to pay off the national debt. On the contrary, in long-terms costs to the health and wellbeing of the nation, it will surely add to it.
Furthermore, the locally provided, locally resourced play opportunities that the strategy was designed to achieve should make a perfect fit with current policy. Engaging Communities in Play, whose report will be launched in April, provides perfect examples of the big society in action. It demonstrates the extraordinary possibilities for improving children's lives that can come about from properly supported voluntary action where there is greatest need. With thousands of play projects up and down the country at serious risk of closure, here are some of the "new solutions" that Nick Clegg's taskforce should have been looking at. Had it done so, the Prime Minister might have had somewhere a bit more inspiring than a supermarket from which to relaunch his big idea.
We must still hope that after the dust has settled from this deep and seemingly indiscriminate round of cuts, the government will look again at its work with children and families and realise that support for community play is (Nick Clegg's words again), exactly "what we are here to do".
Adrian Voce, director, Play England
