Older children banned from garden centre's new soft play area

Friday 05 October 2018

The eagerly awaited new soft play area at Le Friquet Garden Centre has been re-assessed with safety inspectors deciding children over the age of six can't use it anymore.

It only opened last month, after the Blue Diamond Group invested £50,000 to enhance the popular play area which was already provided for customers to use for free near the cafe area at the garden centre.

When the planned revamp of the area was announced a number of parents were pleased, with a number of positive comments on the Express Facebook page.

"About time Guernsey thought more things for children and mums (sic)" said Levi Jade Benford, while Sandra Martel Dunn said, "great stuff! Fondly remember the fun our children had at Le Friquet Activity World twenty odd years ago (sic)."

The new play area has been busy since it opened just over a week ago, but there had reportedly been some complaints regarding older children up to age 10 mixing with younger children.

In a statement posted on it's Facebook page, the managers of Le Friquet Garden Centre said that the play area supplier's safety inspector was in the island this week and checked out the new facility now it was in place, and it was then agreed that a lower age limit should be put in place.

While the toddler area will remain available for children up to age three, only children up to age six will be able to use the older play area from now on.

Le Friquet said this decision was made "in the interests of safety for all of our users. The original limits were based on the information originally supplied in the brief but with customer feedback considered and now reviewed with the equipment in situ it was clear to the inspector that these were too high for our circumstances."

The garden centre acknowledged some customers will be disappointed by this, as there are often complaints raised about there not being enough to do with older children, especially when the weather is bad, however Le Friquet said on this occasion the decision was taken out of their hands.

In a further statement given to Express a spokesman for the garden centre acknowledged the disappointment which older children may be feeling.

"As we previously communicated we have done our best to offer as much as we can for as wide an age range as possible, however we have a duty of care to our customers and must follow the advice of qualified advisers in this instance.

"This information is impossible to gauge in advance and the only way to ensure the safest decision is made is to open it to full capability and set a standard from there. We naturally wanted to be able to open to as many age groups as possible and the only way to give them a chance was to initially open at a maximum of 10 years old."

The garden centre said the decision was made "based on the recommendations of the safety inspector, numerous comments from customers about the behaviour of children and safety of such a wide age group being mixed together and our own observations about its use.

"There is also a risk or overcrowding in such a facility, especially with so few installations like ours on the island, so a smaller age group will naturally ease that and overall improve the childrens' safety."

Pictured: The new look seating area near the new play area at Le Friquet Garden Centre.

The spokesman said Le Friquet has "received a number of suggestions" about how older age groups can be catered for and nothing is being ruled out at this stage but the new rules need time to bed in and to see how it goes. 

The garden centre is also making a number of other additional improvements including new flooring in the cafe, additional al-fresco seating in the garden space behind the play area, plus the re-opening of Caffe Bello next to the play area. 

The spokesman said that will make life easier for customers with children as they will be able to buy drinks while their children continue playing. 

For customers without children, partition walls are soon going up to separate the area which will contain some of the noise from the play area making the wider cafe area quieter, while making it harder for younger children to run off while their parent's backs are turned. 

Pictured top: The new play area which opened at Le Friquet Garden Centre last month.