draw each park as an area on the map and give it a location tag, and make sure the assets inside (play equipment, benches, bins, gates) are captured with their pins inside the area so they inherit the tag. That one piece of setup is what makes every approach below work.
Parks are where inspection regimes matter most: play equipment carries real safety risk, insurers often set explicit terms, and if anything ever goes wrong you'll want dated, photographed evidence of your checks. There isn't one right way to inspect a park in Civic.ly — there are three, and councils genuinely choose differently. This guide lays out each approach, its trade-offs, and how to pick.
Approach 1 — the park sweep (simplest)
Create one recurring inspection on the park area itself, using the Park Sweep checklist — 24 items covering the whole walk-round in order:
Park Sweep (excerpt): 01 Fencing & barriers · 02 Gates · 03 Path surfaces · 04 Grass condition · 05 Trip hazards · 06 Slip hazards · 07 Drainage · 08 Overhead hazards · 09 Litter · 10 Dog fouling … 13 Play & fitness equipment · 14 Safety surfacing · 15 Benches & seating · 16 Bins · 19 Graffiti & vandalism — each answered OK / N/A / a named fault ("Gate issue", "Path defect"), plus an overall condition rating.
There's a sweep for each kind of open space — Playground Area Sweep, Cemetery Sweep, Allotment Sweep, Car Park Sweep — so pick the one matching the site. One task per visit; the inspector walks the space and signs off the checklist. When they find a problem, they raise a defect against the specific asset — the slide, the gate — not the park.
Pros: fastest to set up, one task per visit, very easy to train. For a general condition round it's often all you need.
Cons: you don't build an inspection record per asset. If a claim ever lands on the slide, you have park-level evidence rather than slide-level. A defect raised from a failing sweep item attaches to the whole park unless you deliberately raise it on the asset. And a sweep is swipeable — a less diligent inspector can complete it from the van. One town council rejected sweeps for exactly this reason: "if you've got to check each item, you've got to go to each item."
Approach 2 — per-asset inspections (most rigorous)
Filter the asset register by the park's location tag so you can see everything in the park, then either create standalone recurring inspections per asset, or — usually better — multi-select the assets and create a routine, so the whole park generates one batch of per-asset inspection tasks each cycle.
Within this approach you have a checklist decision:
- The Simple Checklist everywhere — four questions: overall condition, cleanliness, functionality, safety. Easiest to train, and because every asset answers the same questions you get comparable reporting across the whole estate — filter the inspections list by that checklist and you have a live report.
- Asset-specific checklists — each equipment type has its own: Swing Check (overall condition, surface cleanliness, ground surface condition, hazardous protrusions), Slide Check, Climbing Frame Check, Roundabout Check, Multi Play Unit Check, and a Basic Play Check for anything without its own. Richer evidence and forces item-by-item sign-off — "at least this way they have to do their checks." More to train, more to complete.
Pros: item-level, dated, photographed evidence per asset — the strongest position for insurance and RoSPA-style traceability. Per-item sign-off defeats tick-and-walk, and a failing answer offers to raise the defect on the spot, right inside the checklist.
Cons: more tasks per visit and more setup. A big park can be twenty inspections instead of one.
Approach 3 — the hybrid (where many councils land)
Run a sweep for general park condition, plus individual routine checks on the high-risk, high-usage items — the zip wire, the complex climbing frame, anything an insurer or annual inspection report has flagged. You get speed on the routine walk and rigour where liability actually concentrates.
There's also a staged version: start everyone on sweeps to build the habit, then move the high-risk items to per-asset checks as the team gets comfortable.
A worked example
Brackenhill Town Council runs one recreation ground — play area, outdoor gym, five benches, three bins, a MUGA — like this:
- Weekly: a routine over the play equipment and gym, one inspection per item, using the asset-specific checks (Swing Check, Slide Check, Outdoor Gym Check…), assigned to the groundsman. About fifteen minutes on site.
- Weekly, same visit: a Park Sweep on the drawn park area for everything else — paths, grass, fencing, litter, benches, bins.
- Anything wrong becomes a defect on the specific asset, photo attached, which the clerk turns into a job.
That's two recurring inspections doing the work of a paper folder — item-level evidence where liability lives, one fast pass for the rest.
How to choose
- Check your insurance terms first. Some policies require weekly checks of play and fitness equipment — provably, item by item. If yours does, Approach 1 alone won't satisfy it.
- Be honest about your team. Diligent team, simple estate — sweeps may be fine. If you already suspect box-ticking, per-item sign-off is your friend.
- Size the effort to the risk. Benches and bins don't need individual weekly checks; a climbing frame might.
Whichever you choose, the pattern for problems is the same: defects go on the specific asset, with a photo, so the asset builds its own history — that history is what justifies repairs and replacements to your council later.
Common questions
Q: Can I run both a sweep and per-asset checks on the same park? A: Yes — that's Approach 3, and it's common. They're just separate recurring inspections; keep the naming clear so the team knows which is which.
Q: Do the weekly checks replace our annual independent inspection? A: No. The annual (e.g. RoSPA) inspection is done by an external specialist. Your weekly/monthly regime is the operational layer — and when the annual report arrives, its action items become defects and jobs against the specific assets.
Q: We don't own the play equipment — the district/borough does. A: Add the assets and log defects anyway. You'll build a dated, evidenced record of what you've reported to the owning authority — a far stronger position than emails when you need them to act.