Schoolchildren in Ammanford are being invited to have their say on the new look for the town’s play park.

The project to revamp the park has been ongoing for the past 18 months, with town councillors agreeing that major funding would be needed to improve the playground.

A budget of up to £120,000 has been set for the work – to be met from council and grant funding – and four designs have now been received from companies.

“The designs will be going out to consultation this coming week,” the clerk to Ammanford Town Council, Duncan Morgan, told the South Wales Guardian.

“Once councillors have looked at the designs and given their feedback, they will then be taking the designs out to local primary schools to see what the children think.

”The formal tendering process will then follow in order to select a contractor.

"Ammanford Town Council will then enter the tender process whereby the companies will be asked to submit an official tender given a ‘budget cost’ of £120K, to include a design specification and tender criteria."

Mr Morgan said that now this stage has been reached, the aim is to get the park’s new equipment in place ‘as quickly as possible’.

“There will obviously be variables affecting this, such as the weather and contractor availability, but we are certainly aiming for this year," he said.

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He admitted that previous consultation and tendering dates put forward at a recent asset meeting of Ammanford Town Council were ‘a bit ambitious’, with an estimated June completion date for the project.

“However, we will aim to be as close as we can to those dates,” he assured.

A Facebook group Improve Ammanford Play Park, which has 1,200 members, has long been urging the council to improve the ‘neglected’ facility.

The group’s administrator Cordelia McEvoy said in a recent post about the council’s consultation proposals: “The budget is less than I believe is needed but better than I thought we’d get.

“I don’t think we are going to get a major new park but we are going to get something. It’s a start and maybe we can build on this.

“Let’s keep an eye out and make sure they do this.”

She told the SouthWales Guardian: "The park has been neglected for far too long.

"As long as they (the council) don't try and patch up what they have, it's unsafe currently. So many children have had accidents there."