Award-winning Penkridge farm attraction set for £500,000 expansion

Multi award-winning family farm attraction, PLAY@ Lower Drayton Farm, based just outside Penkridge, has just been given the go-ahead for a new phase of development.

Farmers Ray and Richard Bower headed to the South Staffordshire Council Community Hub last week to sign a UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) agreement to give the green light to the ambitious expansion plans.

The £500,000 project will see the attraction, which employs 67 staff and saw over 125,000 visitors pass through its doors in 2023, create a three-storey extension to the existing playbarn, making use of an existing adjacent agricultural building. The plans include a larger café area alongside additional space to host the numerous events that take place throughout the year and extra and room for education, with school visits and the farm’s Home Education sessions being particularly popular. The expansion will also see the addition of new quiet spaces, sensory play areas and a changing places toilet facility to support visitors with additional needs.

Richard Bower says:

“Since PLAY@ opened we’ve seen significant growth in visitor numbers and also in the number and variety of events we run through the year – including our new Jingle Ville festive adventure, which premiered in 2023. We’ve realised that we already need more indoor space as we continue to grow, so the three-storey expansion is coming at the perfect time. Inclusivity is particularly important to us, and while PLAY@ is, by design, accessible we know there are things we can do to help visitors with additional needs enjoy their day even more – and the new quiet spaces, sensory areas and changing places toilet facilities are designed to do just that.

“This expansion will increase visitor capacity and, in turn, create new job opportunities for the local area as we continue to grow.”

Work has now commenced on the new space, the project is planned to complete in several phases, with visitors getting first access to the new areas at Christmas 2024.

To find out what makes PLAY@ Lower Drayton Farm an award-winning day out, head tohttps://playatthefarm.co.uk