Playground Fund: methodology note
Published 18 June 2026
Applies to England
© Crown copyright 2026
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/18-million-playground-fund/playground-fund-methodology-note
Overview of the programme
The Playgrounds Fund provides up to £18m of funding over 2 years to refurbish and improve up to 200 playgrounds across England. The fund will be delivered through 66 Local Authorities, each awarded £270,000 to cover 3 playgrounds. The fund will improve children’s access to safe, inclusive and high-quality local play spaces in the communities that need them most.
Methodological principles
The methodology follows these core principles:
- focus on need: the methodology uses a composite measure of Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index (IDACI) and data on existing playground provision across 3 domains (number of children per playground, playground size and children’s distance to travel to playgrounds), to create a single index of need. The IDACI measures the proportion of all children aged 0 to 15 living in income deprived families, whilst the existing playground provision data captures those areas with the poorest access to and weakest provision of existing playground infrastructure
- exclusion of outlier built-up areas (BUAs): to ensure appropriately sized places are selected, BUAs without a population of between 15,000 to 200,000 and all London Boroughs are excluded
- geographic spread: a cap of one BUA per local authority is also applied to broaden geographic distribution, so that only 3 playgrounds per local authority are funded
Place selection methodology
Sixty-six local authorities in England will receive funding for 3 playgrounds each. For the purposes of selecting places, we use BUAs. The funded local authorities are those containing the BUAs with the highest level of combined need across playground provision data and IDACI. The methodology follows 2 steps:
Step 1: rank BUAs according to their IDACI and playground provision scores
The IDACI is a supplementary index of the Income Deprivation domain of the Index of Multiple Deprivation 2025 (IMD25) and is published for each 2022 BUA.
The data on existing playground provision (number of children per playground, playground size and children’s distance to travel to playgrounds), produced by the University of Sheffield, provides data on the 534 largest English BUAs as of Census 2021 (with populations over 15,000).
The 534 BUAs are ranked from 1 to 534 across each of the 3 domains of playground provision data. They are also ranked from 1 to 534 for IDACI based on the average rank of all Lower Super Output Areas (LSOAs) within that BUA.
These 4 ranks are then weighted as set out below and combined together to provide a combined score across the 534 BUAs:
- number of children per playground domain (16.67%)
- playground size domain (16.67%)
- children’s distance to travel to playgrounds domain (16.67%)
- IDACI (50%)
BUAs are then ranked in order of combined score, from most in need to least in need. In the event of a tie, the area with the highest need based on the playground provision data is prioritised.
Step 2: exclude ineligible BUAs
All BUAs with a population of over 200,000 and all London boroughs are then excluded. All BUAs are assigned to a local authority. While in most cases BUAs fall exactly into one local authority, some BUA boundaries span across local authority boundaries. BUAs are therefore assigned to the local authority that accounts for the highest proportion of the population of that BUA based on the population of Output Areas (OAs) within that BUA which are mapped to a local authority based on the OA’s population-weighted centroid.
Step 3: select most in need BUAs
From the remaining pool of BUAs, the 66 most in need BUAs are selected in order of need (most to least) based on the combined need index described in step 1. To ensure geographic spread, local authorities are limited to receiving funding for their most in need BUA.
List of places
| Built-up area | Local authority |
|---|---|
| Accrington | Hyndburn |
| Ashington (Northumberland) | Northumberland |
| Ashton-under-Lyne | Tameside |
| Barnsley | Barnsley |
| Bedworth | Nuneaton and Bedworth |
| Bilston (Wolverhampton) | Wolverhampton |
| Birkenhead | Wirral |
| Blackburn (Blackburn with Darwen) | Blackburn with Darwen |
| Blackpool | Blackpool |
| Bloxwich | Walsall |
| Bootle (Sefton) | Sefton |
| Canvey Island | Castle Point |
| Chatham | Medway |
| Clacton-on-Sea | Tendring |
| Consett | County Durham |
| Crewe | Cheshire East |
| Darlington | Darlington |
| Dewsbury | Kirklees |
| Doncaster | Doncaster |
| Dover | Dover |
| Droitwich Spa | Wychavon |
| Dudley (Dudley) | Dudley |
| Eastbourne | Eastbourne |
| Eston | Redcar and Cleveland |
| Failsworth | Oldham |
| Farnworth | Bolton |
| Fleetwood | Wyre |
| Grimsby | North East Lincolnshire |
| Halifax | Calderdale |
| Hartlepool | Hartlepool |
| Hastings | Hastings |
| Havant | Havant |
| Herne Bay | Canterbury |
| Heywood | Rochdale |
| Hucknall | Ashfield |
| Huyton with Roby | Knowsley |
| Jarrow | South Tyneside |
| Keighley | Bradford |
| Leigh (Wigan) | Wigan |
| Lincoln | Lincoln |
| Little Hulton | Salford |
| Louth | East Lindsey |
| Mansfield | Mansfield |
| Margate | Thanet |
| Middlesbrough | Middlesbrough |
| Nelson (Pendle) | Pendle |
| Old Trafford | Trafford |
| Preston (Preston) | Preston |
| Prestwich | Bury |
| Reddish | Stockport |
| Rotherham | Rotherham |
| Ryde | Isle of Wight |
| Skelmersdale | West Lancashire |
| Southend-on-Sea | Southend-on-Sea |
| St Helens (St. Helens) | St. Helens |
| Sunderland | Sunderland |
| Thornaby-on-Tees | Stockton-on-Tees |
| Tipton | Sandwell |
| Torquay | Torbay |
| Wakefield | Wakefield |
| Wallsend | North Tyneside |
| Wellingborough | North Northamptonshire |
| Widnes | Halton |
| Wisbech | Fenland |
| Worksop | Bassetlaw |
| Wythenshawe | Manchester |