CHILDREN in Botley could soon be whizzing down a zip wire and grinding on a revolutionary skate pole after the area was given a £48,000 grant for new play equipment.

The Pinnocks Way playground and recreation area in Dean Court is heading for a revamp after it was one of eleven successful applicants in Oxfordshire to win £500,000 of funding from the Government’s £235m Playbuilder programme.

The community wants to use the cash to build a zip wire, a Miram skate pole, a slide, a sandpit and a bog garden to capture surface water at the bottom of the park.

Children in the area currently have a broken seesaw and two rusting climbing frames to use.

But they will have to wait to get their hands on the new equipment as another £50,000 of funding is needed to make the ambitious plans a reality.

Mother of seven Mandy Champ from Pinnocks Way, said: “It’s really good news – we’re so chuffed.

“Not a lot of people use the park now because of the state of the equipment, it’s horrible. It’s quite out-dated and very rusty.”

Cumnor parish councillors also want to install low level lights on the back of the Dean Court Social Club so the children can continue to use the equipment in the afternoon during the winter.

They are hoping the extra £50,000 they need will come from the Waste Recycling Environmental programme, which hands out grants to community projects within 10 miles of a landfill site, in this case the site at Sutton Courtenay.

If successful, the community hopes to have a new playground up and running by March 2010.

Cumnor parish councillor Judy Roberts said they were ecstatic to have got the grant from the Government fund.

She added: “The children are stunned. They thought they weren’t getting anything.

“The playground now looks very run down.

“I think the children always think they're at the bottom of the heap so it would be nice to see them get a premier playground.”

Other play areas to benefit from the Government cash include Playfield Road, Kennington, Bernwood Road, on Oxford’s Barton estate; and Horspath Village Hall.

Oxfordshire County Council's Playbuilder development officer Howie Watkins said: “Now that the schemes have been selected, the hard work can really begin.

“All of the schemes have been designed to challenge and inspire the children that play in them.

“They will create real challenges for the landscape architects working on the projects and I am looking forward to seeing these communities’ dreams become a reality.”