A Stunning Playground Installation in Burnley at St James’ Lanehead CofE Primary School
Jade, the School Business Manager, attended the LASBM conference back in 2019 where she met our North West Consultant. She explained that the school had a large field area that they wanted to develop over phases and in particular they wanted to add some climbing equipment onto the banking area to be used by their KS1 pupils.
School: St James’ Lanehead CofE (VA) Primary School
Location: Burnley, Lancashire
Jade, the School Business Manager, attended the LASBM conference back in 2019. She was looking for a playground company that could carry out a bespoke playground installation.
She explained that the school had a large field area that they wanted to develop over phases. In particular they wanted to add some climbing equipment onto the banking area to be used by their KS1 pupils. The budget came from both the sport premium and the diocese.
They wanted to focus on building core muscles. The play equipment was the main focus for the sport premium spend and they also needed an outdoor shelter / classroom classroom where they could hold forest school lessons.
The playground project came to a holt when the covid pandemic hit. Thankfully, it was picked back up once the school had settled back into normalcy. The team at ESP worked with the school making changes to the play area designs to ensure the plans met their vision and requirements.
The team designed a Freeflow unit to create a bespoke climbing play experience that sat on the slope. It was important that this was challenging enough for all age groups. This unique play unit included a slide, climbing net, crawl nets, tunnel, swinging log bridge, traverse net, and a climbing wall. Grass matting playground safety surfacing wear pads were also included to allow for year-round use and to provide the necessary safety surfacing the new equipment required.
The fully enclosed lockable outdoor classroom accommodates up to 30 children and includes storage. This enabled the children to store their belongings. The bespoke outdoor classroom also contains a separate enclosed drying room on the side to accommodate wellies and coats.
A rubber mulch pathway now leads from the school down to the outdoor classroom. The school used some additional money raised by the PTA to order our three-tier amphitheatre to create an outdoor seating space too.
Jade said “We are delighted with the works and the service from start to finish. I would certainly work with ESP PLAY again when they have more money to spend and would absolutely recommend us to other schools.
The school are going to continue to work with ESP PLAY over the coming years to continue to develop the huge play space and we very much look forward to working with them again in the near future.