JA2015 - Playground Equipment 2

This product was chosen because it’s known to cause many accidents among the youngest consumers. Every year, in the EU 28 Member States, are taking place more than 135.000 injuries to 0-14 years children involving playground equipment, shows EU Injury Database (IDB). Though in the last three years there has been no RAPEX notification on dangerous playground equipment, this can mean that the risk might have to do with the installation, use and maintenance of the products. The lifetime of some items of playground equipment is 20-30 years and these have to remain safe throughout the entire life, therefore the inspection and the maintenance of the products are more significant than for other products.

Objectives

• to build on and further develop if necessary the extensive documentation produced by the first Joint Action on playgrounds
• to detect unsafe playgrounds and take action against them

• to ensure that inspected playgrounds are safe in use

The Final Technical Report of this activity can be downloaded by clicking on the cover page of the report. Very interesting information can be found within this report and it is particularly useful for market surveillance authorities and anybody else interested to know more about risk assessment of playgrounds.

JA2008 - Playground Equipment 1

The Joint Action Safe play on the Playground! – Improving the safety of the playground equipment ran from September 2007 until November 2008. The Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection was the lead organisation of this project. The main task was to enhance regulations and market surveillance activities in 8 participating countries: Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. The raising of all stakeholders’ awareness of the issues regarding playground safety was also one of our priorities in this Joint Action.

The main activities of the participants were:

• Analysis of the legal framework of the playground safety issue in their respective countries;

• Initiating and conducting the checks of the equipment sold by traders or/and installed in the playgrounds. Nearly 16,000 playgrounds and 50 traders from 8 participating countries were checked;

• Preparing the background for education and information campaigns if they are needed;

• Setting up exchange of information and experience schemes between respective market surveillance authorities.

The main deliverables of the Joint Action are the following:

• Leaflet for parents and carers explaining briefly some of the most important aspects of playground equipment safety. National linguistic versions contain contact data of the competent authorities (developed in 8 linguistic versions),

• Booklet for area administrators – a manual explaining how to maintain the safety of playgrounds, which contains information about requirements from the standards and useful form for inspections (developed in 8 linguistic versions),

• Handbook for inspectors – a detailed manual for inspectors from public administration. The chapters reflect all phases of an inspection: from planning through information campaign until preparing a summary report. The appendices contain the examples of best practices from market surveillance authorities in Europe;

• Checklist with instruction;

• Film on how to use professional test-probes during an inspection of playground equipment.

All deliverables are available on the website of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection.