Open your road for play!

Making your street a safe place for children, young people and all your neighbours to play, hang out and have fun.

National and local research has highlighted that children are not playing out in the same way they have done in recent decades. Traffic has doubled since the 1980s – more needs to be done to support children and families to have safe spaces to play.

Leeds City Council has an award-winning play streets scheme and is proud to be one of Playing Out’s beacon play streets.

Play streets happen when residents apply to the council to close the streets outside their homes to traffic for a few hours. This allows children to play and neighbours to come together and relax and have fun on their street. 

A play street allows children to play freely. They might scoot, cycle, skate, chalk, skip, kick a ball around, run, play games, put on plays – all on the safe and open stretch of their own road. Play streets give time and space for play and children have the freedom to choose how they play. 

Here is a play street in action:

Running a play street is simple, but there are key steps and information you will need to know before you start. Look through the Leeds toolkit to find out more:

If you are interested or would like to find out more, please contact:
play.streets@leeds.gov.uk