Children and parents visiting the play areas have been told it's their responsibility to make sure they are safe - and asked not to shout.

St Andrew's Parish Council has told parents and children to sanitise their hands before entering and after leaving the area.

New guidelines posted on the gates to the parks advise people to avoid it if it’s busy, minimal use of tube slides, playhouses and tunnels as well as no shouting. The term busy has not been defined so that parents can make up their own minds, according to the council.

Councillor Vince Williams, chairman of the play areas and open spaces committee, said it is up to parents to determine the safety level.

He said: “The government leaves it open as to what we can do, we’ve followed all the government advice.

“What we agreed is to do an initial technical safety check, de-weed the area and empty the bins to make sure people can go in and we would do a one-off full disinfectant spray.

“Then, in the posters we’ve put up, the onus is on the public to bring along their hand sanitiser, to social distance and to not shout. We haven’t defined what busy is because each individual person will use common sense and decide if it’s too busy for them to go in. If it’s too busy, go away.

“As we reopen the parks, we expect an initial higher usage in the first week or so because the children haven’t been for a while.”

The original reopening of the play areas was delayed by 10 days as the parish trained new staff in health and safety. Coun Williams added: “We used to contact Swindon Borough Council to do our play park safety checks and everything else.

“They are no longer doing that so we had to hire our own staff and start our own service that looks after everything including play parks. That started on July 1. We weren’t ready for July 4 when we could reopen. So when they were all trained we asked our guys to go out and do the safety checks in all of our parks.

“They put the signs up, disinfected the areas and we had to agree all this in our monthly council meeting.”

The council has play areas at Warrener Close, Standen Way, Highdown Way, Wallis Drive, Cobbet Close, Buscot Close, Bridlewood, Eastbury Way, Brook Park and Butleigh Road.