• SO the £1.5million-plus Gloucester Gate Playground, which was due to open in “autumn 2019” is now to open “in May”, as the Friends of Regent’s Park newsletter now has it – and not at Easter as we were so recently assured.

The bad weather has of course played a part in this but thousands of the park’s visitors have been inconvenienced for nearly a year by the continuing closure of the Chestnut Walk for the array of contractors’ vehicles right across the entrance to that route.

The park’s authorities refuse to provide any path, temporary or otherwise, across the resulting quagmire above the intended mega playground, and patronisingly tell complainers the extra walk around the detour will be good for them.

Visitors are to be seen every day trying and failing to negotiate the usual route and giving up as they slide through the mud.

And “using natural materials such as wood, rope, bark and willow…” this “natural and inclusive playground” will apparently “blend seamlessly into the historic landscape of The Regent’s Park”. Really?

A fully accessible playground with imaginative new developments (zipwire, tunnels, bridges and all) is a great idea but it will hardly blend into the landscape.

And let us hope funds will also be devoted to outreach work, to encourage children from the areas being decimated by HS2, to feel it is for them too.

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