SCORES of children between three and thirteen had the time of their lives in Blackburn at the weekend.

They were climbing, swinging, exploring and squealing with delight as they challenged themselves to take daring steps in the sunshine at the newly opened adventure playground in Witton Park.

A lot of mums, dads (and, it has to be admitted, more than one grandad) also got involved – purely, of course, to help out their own youngsters or grandchildren by demonstrating how a particular obstacle should be safely and successfully negotiated!

Before the skies darkened and the rain came down on Sunday afternoon hundreds of kids and adults could be overheard talking to each other about what a great asset The Wits is going to be to everyone who can get to it.

And how marvellous it is that hundreds of children will now be able to spend time totally absorbed chatting with others and getting exercise outdoors rather than sitting in front of the TV or computer screen for hour after hour during the summer holidays.

Of course it’s not been cheap to provide such facilities – about £750,000 in this case for a pirate ship climbing frame, slide musical sculptures and all the rest.

The money is part of a £2.5million play investment secured by the council from the government’s Play Pathfinder Scheme.

Great work by the council in making a successful case to get the funding.

It would be nice to think a lot of other parts of East Lancashire will similarly benefit …but will they?

In these troubled times we’re told ‘public spending’ has to be cut drastically and the big worry is that only groups with strong political clout will in future be able to loosen the tightly-drawn strings of the public purse.

Such projects can be seen as soft targets for cuts on the basis that people (and particularly children!) are unlikely to launch public protests about something they’ve never had. But officials know that adults are more than likely to get angry at losing a service they are used to.

And it’s difficult to see private firms getting involved in children’s playgrounds through ‘partnerships’ or financing projects.

In Victorian times some rich businessmen did spend to do good for the sake of it.

But today such investment is very rarely made without a quantifiable financial return. Big business wants to know what’s in it for them – in cold, hard cash.

Let’s hope that one way or another I’m wrong because it’s hard to see a more justifiable way of spending public or private money than in enabling future generations to learn how to play – with their parents within earshot.