Ahoy! Pirate ship built on playground at Dudley primary school after area was closed off

Work was agreed between HandsOn and Dudley Academies Trust to revamp the area at Kates Hill Primary School, on Peel Street in Dudley.

It comes after an inspection was carried out as part of the process of the school joining the trust, which included a check on the playground.

Inspectors sealed off the area amid safety concerns and efforts immediately began to provide an area for youngsters before school returned.

Toby Rix, who is a co-founder and joint managing director with with Sam Harradine for HandsOn which designs and builds community projects, said: "We've done a bit of work at Kates Hill before and earlier in the year, around May, we'd done a project for them so we had a strong relationship with the school and built some great stuff there.

"The school has joined a new trust, so Dudley Academies Trust, and as part of that the school's playground was inspected and a lot of it was condemned, it was unusable so it became a bit of an emergency project."

The 27-year-old, from Exeter, said discussions were immediately started between the headteacher and the head of the trust on the project – with a lot of it being replacing the shelters already there and adding some Early Years elements as well.

"We've managed to turn it round in a matter of months," he said.

"We learned about it in June time, so we kind of had to get it done so our team has been up there building the playground. And we've had a bit of support with Marco Longhi and his team, so they came by for a day and started building."

The rebuild – funded from cash HandsOn secured from Learning Technologies who they have a "great relationship with" alongside money from the trust – was completed on Friday

Marco Longhi, MP for Dudley North, said: "The emergency project to refurbish and renew the children’s play area was essential as the school had closed it. It was unsafe and not somewhere I would have been happy leaving my child to play in, even if it was safe.

“The headteacher had alerted me to the problem and a meeting was convened on site several weeks ago at which a specialist company, Hands On, and the chief executive of the trust were present with me.

“I was delighted to that the trust, and the company, who had access to some charitable funds, immediately came together to renew the play area with a completion target in line with the new school year this September.

“It was very satisfying to also spend some time with my office team and Sajid Hanif, a local community activist, on site – ‘hands on’ helping the company on the day. All in all a brilliant result for the local community, I hope they will come to visit and see for themselves."

There is now new shelters on the site, classrooms, stages, garden walls, mud kitchens and the pirate ship.