Edinburgh adopts Playing Out street closure scheme

Edinburgh is to roll out a programme that allows residents to temporarily close their roads to enable children to play safely outside. 

The council’s transport and environment committee unanimously approved the extension of play street events across the capital following a pilot scheme launched last year. 

The Playing Out evaluation resulted in 90% of residents agreeing that the scheme had been “highly positive”. 

The committee agreed to implement Playing Out as council policy, adding that further work will be required to improve the guidelines and that a review will take place every three years to assess cost of Playing Out and its alignment with wider council priorities.

For the pilot scheme the council approved 54 Playing Out sessions across 30 streets in the capital. 

Respondents felt the sessions had: 

• given children a safe and beneficial opportunity to play (90%)
• resulted in children making new friends (83%)
• increased children's sense of belonging in the community (88%)
• fostered increased community connections between different generations (90%)

Eleanor Bird, young people's champion at the council, said: “It's so important for children to have the freedom to play outside in an unstructured way. The responses to our consultation showed how hugely beneficial closing off streets for play and recreation is, not just for the children themselves but for their parents and neighbours too. It will be fantastic to see more and more communities holding Playing Out sessions in their streets, especially in this Year of Young People.”

Lucy Richardson, a member of the organisation Edinburgh Playing Out, said: “We look forward to working together to promote temporary street closures allowing children to play safely and communities to get together.”

The council’s Locality teams will continue be responsible for managing and facilitating the scheme.

Once an application for a Play Streets event has been approved, the council makes the orders allowing the play sessions and provides signs and barriers to local people who have agree to take responsibility for the temporary road closure. Emergency and pedestrian access was maintained throughout the play session.