Play-friendly streets could boost sports

Making residential streets safer for children to play on could boost physical fitness among Scotland's young people and create a new generation of Scottish sporting heroes, it was claimed today.

Ideas for safer streets include reduced speed limits on residential roads, roads restricted to residents only, signs to warn drivers that children may be playing there, communal space in new estates and doubling pavement width on "play streets".

Marguerite Hunter Blair, chief executive of Play Scotland, said the recent snow had given children the chance to play out in the streets where they live. She said: "The fact that so many of our children have reacted spontaneously and enthusiastically to these opportunities gives lie to the myth that children today don't want to play outdoors."

SNP MSP Jamie Hepburn said: "Many of our sporting heroes started out playing in the streets. Now too many children end up staying inside playing football on the Playstation instead of playing the real thing on the street."