About Places to Play

What this site is

Places to Play is a free, independent directory of places to take children to play in the UK — public playgrounds and park play areas, indoor soft play centres, splash parks, trampoline parks and more. For each place we publish what parents actually need: where it is, what's in the play area, which ages it suits, whether it's free or paid, and the practical details like parking, toilets, cafés and accessibility.

Our mission

Great places to play are scattered across council pages, operator websites and word of mouth, and they're rarely gathered in one place with reliable, structured detail. Our goal is simple: help any parent or carer quickly find a good place to take the kids nearby, and know what to expect before they go — at no cost.

Who is behind it

Places to Play is run by an independent editorial team. We are not affiliated with any council, park, play centre or operator. We are a small, reader-supported project that compiles information from official sources — see exactly how we verify our data.

How the directory is built

Our master list of parks and play spaces is built on OS Open Greenspace from Ordnance Survey — the official, openly licensed national dataset of parks and play areas in Great Britain. On top of that we research each place against OpenStreetMap and its own official council or operator website to add verified detail: equipment, ages, opening, parking, toilets and accessibility. Coverage is growing region by region.

How we're funded

The site is reader-supported through advertising. Advertising never influences which places we list or what we say about them — every listing is compiled the same way, from the same public sources.

Found something wrong?

Play areas and opening details change. If you spot anything out of date or incorrect, please tell us and we'll fix it quickly via our contact page. Accuracy is the whole point of this project.