A splash park at Westexe Rec

The paddling pool at Westexe Rec has kept Tiverton’s children cool for decades, but it will soon need an expensive refurbishment. Summers are getting longer and hotter, and the pool doesn’t work for every child: some young people can’t use it at all.

We’re asking whether you’d like us to treat this as an opportunity: to create a modern, fully inclusive splash park that mixes creative water play with accessible equipment, so many more young people can have fun and cool down together, free.

A splash park could be part of a wider upgrade of the Rec, alongside the new toilets we’ve already agreed to fund (we’re looking into them now), accessible seating and other improvements. It would sit well with the Rec’s play area, its sports and our Proms in the Park.

We wouldn’t be the first to swap an old paddling pool for a splash park:

• Warminster replaced its 1947 paddling pool, which could no longer be repaired, with a splash pad in 2022, with 12 water features, water that’s recycled, and sensory panels added since. Its town council calls it “a fantastic success”.
• Heanor, in Derbyshire, built its splash pad where its old paddling pool stood, with a button post anyone can press to start the water.
• Witney has fountains and sprays a wheelchair user can reach, a floor button to turn the water on, and a non-slip surface you can feel underfoot, and its children helped design it.
• Melksham’s splash pad is free, and holds quieter sessions each week for children with special educational needs.

Closer to home, Exeter is building a new splash pad at Heavitree Pleasure Grounds, due to open in spring 2027.

A splash park can work for children of every ability, playing together, if it’s designed that way from the start. That can mean:

• sprays and fountains at different heights, which a wheelchair user can reach;
• big, easy-to-press buttons to start the water;
• no standing water, and a firm, level, non-slip surface;
• strong colours that are easy to see;
• a quieter area, and quieter sessions, for children who find noise and crowds hard;
• shade, and seats with backs and arms close to the play;
• an accessible toilet with room to change, ideally a Changing Places toilet;
• step-free paths and wide gates all the way from the street.

As the Sensory Trust puts it: “Think about the whole journey, not just the space itself.” It matters: in a survey by the charity Scope, half of parents of disabled children (49%) said their local playground had some accessibility problem.

We understand others would help pay for any upgrade, leaving us to pay somewhere between a third and a half of the total. That’s an estimate for now: our costs are subject to future feasibility work, if you want us to go ahead. For a sense of scale, splash pads elsewhere have cost from about £150,000 (Heanor, 2019) to £250,000 (Melksham, 2019). And if you want us to be more ambitious, we can be. Tell us in the survey.