Work on a £300,000 fully accessible playground starts on Monday 24 August, closing the King's Road play area until early October. What is being built and why.
Herne Bay’s Memorial Park play area will close on Monday 24 August so that work can start on a £300,000 rebuild, Canterbury City Council announced on 30 July. The playground, at the junction of King’s Road and Dering Road, will stay shut for the whole of the works, which the council expects to finish in early October.
The timing is the awkward part for families: the closure begins in the final week of the school summer holidays, something the council itself acknowledges in the announcement. If the early October date holds, the new playground should be open again before the autumn half-term.
What is being built
This is not a like-for-like refurbishment. The existing play area is being extended, with the new equipment installed alongside the pieces that were added in 2023, and the design is built around children with disabilities and additional needs playing alongside everyone else. The council’s list includes:
- a fully accessible wheelchair swing, opened with a radar-type key of the kind used for accessible toilets
- a fully accessible wheelchair seesaw
- an accessible sand pit
- a sensory play zone and a separate calm play zone
- dynamic play equipment for older and more confident children
- shaded seating areas, and signage in British Sign Language and Braille
The council says the design was shaped with SNAAP, the Canterbury-based Special Needs Advisory and Activities Project, and through consultation with parents, carers, children and young people with additional needs and disabilities.
Cllr Mel Dawkins, the cabinet member responsible for play areas, said: “This play area will be bigger and better than it’s ever been and will mean all children can play alongside each other.”
Who is paying
The £300,000 cost is coming from two pots: the council’s own capital funding and Section 106 contributions, the money developers pay towards local infrastructure as a condition of planning permission for housing schemes in Herne Bay. In other words, part of this playground is being paid for by the developments that have added families to the town in recent years.
What it means for you
If your children use the Memorial Park playground, plan around a closure from Monday 24 August through September. The rest of Memorial Park stays open; it is only the play area that is fenced off for the works. For the last week of the holidays, the district has plenty of alternatives, from the beach to the attractions in our checked list of things to do in Canterbury, Whitstable and Herne Bay.
For families of children with disabilities, the finished playground is designed to be one of the most accessible in the district, with the wheelchair swing, seesaw and sand pit all usable by children who are excluded from most standard equipment. We will report the reopening date when the council confirms it.
Have your say