A routine RoSPA inspection flagged some fine surface cracks at a popular skate park on one of the developments we look after – and it was a nice reminder that no two days in estate management are ever quite the same.
What the RoSPA Report Found
RoSPA - the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents – informs best-practice with regards to play area safety. This requires Preim to instruct independent safety inspections of play and recreational equipment across the estates we manage. The inspections are part of our routine maintenance programmes, so our community spaces are always maintained to high safety standards.
At one of our estates, the 2025 safety inspection flagged some fine cracking to the skate park's concrete surface. In itself, this wasn’t a major or urgent issue, but it’s exactly the kind of thing that needs rectifying before it becomes a bigger problem - both for our resident’s safety and so the surface is kept in optimum condition for years to come.
The Search for the Right Fix
Skate parks aren't something you fix every day, and that showed when we first went out to quote the work. The specialist play area contractors we approached came back with costs that were a lot higher than we'd hoped for a job of this size.
So rather than simply accepting the first quotes on the table, we did some digging. We got in touch with a local contractor who had the right skills and equipment to carry out the surface repairs to an excellent standard, and at a noticeably lower cost.
Skate parks aren't the most common asset for a residential estate to manage, but that's exactly the sort of thing we enjoy getting stuck into.
Oliver Taylor, Regional Director at Preim, said: "This is a great example of what estate management is really about. It's relatively simple to fix the more common items such as signage and fencing, but a skate park surface isn't something you deal with every week, and it would have been easy to just accept the first quote we got.
Instead, our team took the time to find a genuinely better solution for residents. We're used to dealing with the quirky, less common side of estate management, and it's exactly that kind of extra effort that makes the difference."
Small Job, Big Difference
The work by our team to source a solution and fix the surface cracks on this particular skate park shows what proactive estate management looks like in practice. It’s spotting an issue early, and making sure residents' money is spent wisely without cutting corners on safety or quality.
The skate park is now fully repaired and wheels are rolling again!
