Wiltshire Council proposes £700k for play areas and air quality

Wiltshire Council will be given £4.526m in extra government funding

More than £700,000 could be spent on rural play areas and an air quality research project.

Wiltshire Council said it wants to spend £603,000 of government funding on "vitally needed" rural play areas.

A further £100,000 is set to be used to buy hundreds of sensors designed to monitor air quality.

Councillor Nick Holder said the project would help the council understand the reality of emissions across the county.

He said: "This will provide us with a meaningful baseline from which we can work with the academic researchers and understand if there actually is a problem."

Further details of the suggested projects and spending are set to be revealed when the budget proposals face scrutiny at a council meeting on 20 February.

The council received confirmation of £4.526m in extra government funding shortly before a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

However, £3.798m of the funding is reserved for the social care sector, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Richard Clewer said there were areas in Wiltshire with "particularly acute" problems

According to the council, this will allow more preventative social care work in areas identified to be of the highest risk.

Speaking about the funding for play areas, councillor Nick Botterill, cabinet member for finance, said: "We can't underestimate the importance of children having play equipment, being able to be active."

The leader of the council, Richard Clewer, added: "We have areas where we've got rural communities with small pockets of deprivation and where this play area problem is particularly acute."

He explained, given the funding was a "one-off" with no guarantee in the next budget, it would be "foolish" to invest it in anything which involved ongoing revenue expenditure.