Two decades ago, the city’s council chose to prioritise playgrounds and youth clubs to help its poorer families – and the benefits are plain to see
Read more: Last youth centre in one of England’s most deprived coastal areas faces closure
T
hree schoolboys in black sweatshirts dart from a wooden fort across a sandpit, weaving and jostling past prams, scooters and bystanders, after a pink football. A pony-tailed girl launches herself on to a moving roundabout, while a young man wrestles a half-naked toddler into a pair of training pants before she scampers off back to the sandpit in the autumn sunshine.
This is Buckland adventure playground in Portsmouth, surrounded by trees and a mix of two-storey flats, terrace houses and tower blocks, mostly social housing built to replace the city’s demolished slums.
