This is a short summary of our activities for the year. For a fuller report, see our annual report and accounts. Our last annual report outlined our organisational decision at the end of 2023/2024 financial year to strategically refocus Playing Out’s work, resources and capacity as a small organisation in response to (a) where the play streets movement had got to and (b) the national opportunities for policy change arising, in order to best focus work towards our vision and overall aim. This is re summarised here: “After exploring all possible options over the past two years, we came to the ultimately positive decision that we can best move things forward by letting go of direct support for play streets and instead enabling and empowering the wider network of resident activators, local organisations and committed councils to take the idea forward in a more self-supporting way., with space for new ideas and support to emerge. As an organisation, we will re-focus our efforts on the bigger picture changes needed for all children to play out and be active every day, championing and building on the momentum of play streets and responding to the huge opportunities to collaborate with other organisations and feed into policy-making” (Annual report 2023-24). This decision meant that in the first half of 2024-25, our play streets programme delivery and hands-on support via our small, dedicated play streets team ended in a carefully planned and well managed and communicated way (August 2024), to best free up the movement to become more self-sustaining. Our play streets work also became more strategically focussed to support the success of this direction. Alongside this strategic play streets work, we focussed our efforts on advocating and campaigning for national policy change around children’s freedom and right to play in the built environment and community-led change. We have been able to seize important national opportunities arising, and to help to shape these and strengthen their impact and outcomes. We have used the experience and knowledge we have gained over 15 years of supporting parents, residents, councils and community organisations in the national play streets movement to help push for change. Up until the end of August, the team worked hard to provide support for anyone who wanted it and to set up ongoing peer-support networks (which have continued to grow throughout the year). The programme and team then came to an end in a well-managed, communicated and supported way, designed to maximise the impact of all our play streets work and encourage others to take action. Each play street community on average directly involves 30 children and 15 adults, so in total 1,651 play street communities have directly benefitted almost 50,000 children and 25,000 adults since Playing Out began. Most of these communities have played out regularly over a year or more, with over one million active outdoor play hours enabled through this resident-led model, supported by councils and community organisations, with proven benefit for children’s physical activity, physical literacy, mental wellbeing and sense of community. As well as getting the movement to this point at August 2024, we also worked hard to ensure that the play streets movement benefits children and residents in communities facing more disadvantage, inequalities and challenges With this huge range of information and resources on our website, and the ever-growing expertise that is now ‘out there’ in the UK-wide network of residents, community groups and councils who have been doing and supporting play streets over the past 15 years, we were able to focus on strategic play streets work to help the movement become self-sustaining into the future. From September 2024, we did this through continuing to support our growing online Play Street Forum and other peer-support networks, providing microgrants, establishing play street ‘beacons’ and a number of other strands. New policies and activity resulted in Bradford, Luton, Blackpool and Inverness, amongst others. Our campaigning and policy work included proposing, shaping and strengthening two key major national policy processes: a Parliamentary Inquiry on children and the built environment and national Play Commission. We are also a core partner on the high-profile “More Ball Games” campaign launched with London Sport this year. All of this resulted in widespread media coverage and a much-increased national conversation about children’s right to play outside. In summary, another year of big changes and big impact! Playing Out continues to punch well above its weight and we are proud to see the play street movement we began 16 years ago start to become more diverse and self-sustaining, and for our wider messages about children’s need for outdoor play and freedom being shared by many others, including MPs, influential individuals and a wide range of well-respected organisations. We plan to continue building on all of this over the year ahead.

All of our work involves extensive consultation with stakeholders which informs our plans. For full details, please see the section of our annual accounts and the "Company Activities and impact" section above.

The total amount paid to directors in respect of qualifying services was £74,560. These were fees for delivering specific projects on behalf of the CIC; all management and administration carried out by directors was undertaken on a voluntary basis. There were no other transactions or arrangements in connection with the remuneration of directors, or compensation for director’s loss of office, which require to be disclosed.

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration