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  4. Volunteering to refurbish playgrounds in Caistor, Lincolnshire

Volunteering to refurbish playgrounds in Caistor, Lincolnshire

As part of our professional design services contract for Lincolnshire County Council’s highways department, our team coordinated and took part in volunteering days to transform play areas.

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  • United Kingdom

Working as the council’s highways partner, our locally based team design new roads, highway improvements and flood alleviation schemes across the county. We also bring in expertise from the broader WSP business to support transport planning, ecology assessments and structures requirements. When bidding for the contract, we committed to providing 50 volunteering days per year to benefit local communities.

With Balfour Beatty and Colas, who we work alongside in the Lincolnshire highways alliance, also offering volunteering days as part of their contracts, Lincolnshire County Council decided to co-ordinate the collective volunteer days. Councillors were asked to nominate suitable schemes and we helped draw up a shortlist, with three playgrounds in the market town of Caistor selected.

The Town Council provided materials – including paint, brushes, and cleaning equipment – and promoted the works to local residents through social media while we coordinated and led the volunteer project. Six colleagues from WSP, three from Lincolnshire County Council and two from Colas worked across two days to prepare and repaint playground equipment to make the playground look fresher, and vibrant. 

It was a pleasure to lead the combined team of WSP, Lincolnshire County Council and Colas colleagues who thoroughly enjoyed transforming the playground equipment for the local community in Caistor. Passers-by were delighted to see bright new colours being applied to the equipment.
Richard Hardesty WSP Commission Manager

In total, the volunteers sanded down, cleaned and repainted 17 items of play equipment in bright colours – including roundabouts, swings, benches and slides.

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The scheme is an excellent way to bring benefits to a local community that would ordinarily be hard to achieve. Our play areas in Caistor are well used and just brightening and refreshing them does so much for the wellbeing of our residents, and particularly children in this case. The volunteers worked tirelessly throughout the day to complete the project and we and our residents are very grateful for them giving up their time to help our community.
Carl Thomas Caistor Town Council Clerk
I would just like to pass on my thanks to all those who volunteered and made the scheme a success. Without everyone giving up their time it would not have been able to happen. Thank you so much to everyone involved.
County Cllr Tom Smith

The Caistor project is another example of how we embed social value in many of our projects, with the aim to help communities thrive long after the project is complete. WSP in the UK aims to deliver £120 million in additional social value between 2022 and 2024.

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