A CONCERNED father has branded a children's playground dangerous after a splinter of wood used as a safety surface became embedded in his son's hand.

Now Phillipe Osborne is campaigning for certain types of wood chips to be banned from local playgrounds.

Mr Osborne, of Sunnyroyd, Bradley, had taken his 19-month-old son, Tom, to the village's playground for the afternoon when the accident happened.

"I had hold of his hand all the time and he had just come down the slide," said Mr Osborne, a teacher.

"When he reached the bottom he took a few steps and just fell over and a splinter from one of the woodchips became embedded in his left hand.

"It could have easily have been his face or it could've gone into his leg!"

Little Tom was forced to visit the hospital after the wound in his hand became infected following the accident.

Mr Osborne collected some of the wood chips which average about five inches long, many with sharp points.

"I used to be the health and safety officer at the school where I worked and there's no way for one second that I would allow this sort of thing to go down on a playground," he added.

The playground is looked after by Bradley Parish Council who get the wood chip from the North Yorkshire County Council depot in Skipton.

"There's a group been set up in Bradley to raise money to improve the playground and the least they could do is spend some money on getting a proper safety surface put down."

Michael Tomkins, clerk to Bradley Parish Council, said he was aware of Mr Osborne's concerns and the council was taking "remedial action".

"We have just received a quote to replace the surface in the playground with properly acknowledged bark as soon as we can," he said. "It is going to cost us more than £1,000 and we've got to find that money."

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