A £100,000 skate park and iplay facility are under construction in Westbury.

The joint project between Westbury Town Council and West Wiltshire District Council is due to be completed at Penleigh playing fields this summer.

The cost of the skate park will be about £80,000 and has been split between Westbury Town Council and Lottery funding.

The iplay, an interactive play facility designed to keep kids active, will cost £24,000 and is completely Lottery-funded.

The district council, which secured £240,000 of lottery funding for leisure facilities for west Wiltshire, has already installed an iplay in Bradford on Avon and on the Seymour estate in Trowbridge.

Lucy Murray-Brown, leisure manager at the district council, said: "We spoke to Westbury Town Council who said there was a desperate need for a skate park.

"We decided on Penleigh for the site because it has the biggest concentration of young people in Westbury and the only provision we had there was a small play area."

Westbury town councillor Christine Mitchell is on the Play Areas Working Group, which was instrumental in the construction of the project.

She said: "The skate park and iplay will give the children of Westbury an outlet for all their energy in the summer holidays and other holidays to come.

"There isn't a lot of facilities for children in Westbury and this will give them something to look after and be proud of."

Builders are completing the ground work at the moment and were hoping to lay the tarmac at the end of this week.

Steve Richardson, play facilities officer at the district council added: "The skate park is on schedule at the moment but the iplay cannot be installed until the skate park has been constructed so we can see where it can be placed, but we are hoping it will be finished for the summer."

9:19am Thursday 22nd May 2008

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