A LEADING playground safety campaigner has claimed that there is still a long way to go before playgrounds in Wharf-edale and Aireborough are truly safe for youngsters to use.

Despite widespread improvements to a number of playgrounds in the area, including refurbishment of Tealbeck Park in Otley and soft surfacing being installed at Wharfemeadows Park, Ian Burks, claims only a small amount of progress has been made in the last 12 months.

Mr Burks, of Cookridge, runs the national pressure group the Keep Our Children Safe Campaign after his 16-year-old son Simon was tragically killed after falling off some swings at a Scottish playground onto hard concrete.

Throughout 2000 and last year, Mr Burks teamed up with the Wharfedale Observer to highlight the lack of soft surfacing underneath play equipment in our Play It Safe Campaign.

Mr Burks said: "Overall, I'm sorry to say that there hasn't been any great improvement in the safety of playgrounds in the last 12 months.

"One or two have been improved, like Wharfemeadows Park and Tealbeck Park with the help of the Friends of Wellcroft group, but that's all."

He said that he was still waiting for Leeds City Council to release details of its new strategy for making playgrounds safer.

"All play providers have got to take risk assessments to try and calculate the risk to children," he said.

"As far as I am concerned, there are still playgrounds that are high risk in Leeds.

"There was one playground at Rawdon which is just one of them."

Mr Burks, of Cookridge, who hopes to be involved with the introduction of the council's new strategy when it is introduced, said he has forged a closer working relationship with Leeds Leisure Services and is hoping that things will improve.

"At the very least I hope that things move in the right direction once this strategy comes out.

"Nobody knows what it is like to lose a child. I do not want it to happen again to someone else," he added.

Mr Burks said that his own Keep Our Children Safe Campaign had recently become active again after he was invited to London to sit as an observer at a Government body called the Children's Play Forum

He was also given the opportunity to contribute to a Government report on playground safety, which was written by Professor David Ball, the foremost expert on risk analysis. It is due to be in the public domain from mid-April.

"The campaign has gone from doing nothing to taking off in a big way," Mr Burks said.

"It was the first time a member of the public was invited to sit on the forum and I have also been invited back at a later stage

The meeting was also attended by RoSPA, the NSPCC and National Playing Fields Associa-tion amongst other organisations.

Anyone wanting information about Mr Burks' Play it Safe campaign or playground safety and soft play surfacing can contact him on (0113) 2612958. He is also happy to offer advise on people wishing to set up their own pressure or 'Friends Of' groups.