Horsham District Council recently invited local young people and specifically teenage girls to share their thoughts about outdoor space and leisure provision for teenagers in a district-wide survey.
It also ran a series of focus groups with local schools and youth forums to help young people express their views. The project was developed by the Council’s Fair Space Task and Finish Group; a special task group of councillors, set up to understand whether outdoor spaces in the District currently meet the needs of teenage girls.
The feedback received from the survey was very positive, revealing a high number of young people were happy with the Council’s current parks and open spaces facilities. The review highlighted a need for some Council policies to be updated to better reflect the diverse needs of secondary school children, including girls. Respondents did also provide suggestions for changes that they would like to see for these spaces which will be taken into account when designing play facilities in the future.
Horsham District Council Cabinet Member for Leisure and Green Spaces Cllr David Skipp said: "We are extremely grateful to all the young people who took part in our survey, your voices really do matter, and we really value your engagement with us.
Creating leisure spaces that work well for everyone is important to us and forms part of our ‘Fair spaces for all’ initiative. The feedback received will help us to shape future design principles in our leisure and recreational park spaces.
Cllr Samantha Bateman from the Task and Finish Group commented: “We need to support our young people to lead more active and healthy lifestyles.
"We need to design spaces which accommodate teenage girls' needs alongside those of teenage boys. Thank you to all the teenagers who took the time to support us in the focus groups and surveys".
The Council already incorporates some of the design elements highlighted during the survey process with young people. However, the feedback provides useful information which will be used in new open space developments and ones that are being refurbished in the future. These include:
- Improving accessibility and safety of recreational spaces for all, including girls and young women to ensure personal and physical safety
- Promotion of year-round usable spaces with consideration to all weather facilities to increase use of space
- Outdoor gym facilities to be arranged in ways which allow users to be more sociable as they exercise
- Designs which facilitate more than one group at a time safely using spaces
- Provision of more social seating areas