20-Year Soft Play Lease: What the Fit-Out Commits You To

360 Play has signed a 20-year lease for a 20,000 sq ft (1,858 m²) unit at Broadway Plaza in Birmingham, England. It will be the operator’s eighth UK site.

Amusements & Attractions reported the signing on 29 October 2026. Construction is being run by DP Leisure’s in-house development arm, DP Associates, and the venue is scheduled to open before the end of 2026.

The published attraction list is specific: dodgems and carousels, play frames, climbing activities, and dedicated role-play zones. Founder and managing director Duncan Phillips described the concept as screen-free, imaginative and collaborative.

Rent, fit-out budget, ceiling height, equipment suppliers and the exact opening date are not published, and this article does not fill those gaps with guesses.

The number worth studying is not the 20,000 sq ft. It is the 20 years. Almost nothing inside a soft play unit is designed to last 240 months, and the lease decides who pays when each piece of it stops being fit for purpose.

That is a different question from how much a soft play build costs. It is a question about how the works are specified, who holds the obligation at year eleven, and what your accounts will say about it at year twelve.

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1. What the announcement actually says, and what it leaves open

A 20-year letting is long enough to be worth reading clause by clause. The trade report gives the term, the size, the landlord side and the attraction mix, but very little of the technical detail a buyer would need to model the project.

Two things in that table matter more than the rest. The first is that the tenant is a repeat operator: Ferguson’s quote refers to the brand’s performance at other successful schemes, which means this landlord-tenant relationship has already been tested on other sites. Repeat operators negotiate differently from first-time tenants, and their equipment specification usually reflects what broke last time.

The second is the term itself. Twenty years is a commitment to a building’s shell, not to a play concept. A dodgem ride bought in 2027 will be a fifteen-year-old ride when the lease has five years left on it.

Where this analysis stops: 360 Play has not published its fit-out cost, its equipment schedule or its lease terms beyond the length. Everything below is a framework for reading a deal of this shape, not a description of what this operator signed.

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2. Why twenty years is a different decision from five

In England and Wales, Part II of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 gives most business tenants a statutory right to a new lease when the term ends, unless the lease is contracted out under the prescribed procedure. A 20-year lease signed inside that framework behaves differently from a short lease, because the tenant is not planning an exit at year five. It is planning a renewal, or a sale of the business with the lease attached.

The Lease Code 2020, an RICS professional statement that took effect on 1 September 2020, binds RICS members and regulated firms to disclose the terms that decide this. Its mandatory section requires heads of terms to set out the term, any renewal or break rights, rent review frequency and basis, repairing obligations, permitted use, alterations, fit-out and reinstatement obligations, and rights to assign or sublet.

Those headings are where a play operator’s risk sits. Rent is the number everyone negotiates. Alterations and reinstatement are the clauses that decide whether you can swap a worn play frame at year nine without a dispute, and whether you have to take it out at year twenty when it is still earning money.

Best practice in the Code is narrower than most tenants assume. A tenant break option should be conditional only on paying basic rent to the break date and giving up occupation with no subtenants in place. Reinstatement of alterations should be required only where it is reasonable, unless an absolute requirement was agreed at heads of terms stage.

That last sentence is the one to read twice. If reinstatement is not flagged in the heads of terms, an institutional landlord’s standard form may still contain it, and the Code’s reasonable test becomes your argument rather than your protection.

This is a different subject from how leases behave when park chains consolidate and sites change hands, which we covered in the four-chain lease test. Here the question is narrower: what the term does to the thing bolted to the floor.

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3. Three clocks running inside one unit

A soft play venue is not one asset with one lifespan. It is three asset groups with three different owners, three replacement routes and three ways of failing. Treating them as one line in a budget is the most common modelling error we see in first-time business plans.

The third row is where the money leaks. Padded columns, slides, net tunnels and floor finishes take concentrated wear at the points where children enter and leave a zone, not evenly across the plan. A pad specified as a sewn assembly has to be cut out and rebuilt when it fails. A pad specified with a removable cover can be re-covered in place, at night, without closing the zone.

That is a specification decision made once, at drawing stage, and it is almost never raised in a tender comparison because it does not change the headline price. It changes the fifth-year maintenance bill, which nobody prices at tender.

What to verify Ask the supplier for the pad schedule zone by zone, and for each zone ask whether the cover can be replaced without dismantling the frame. If the answer is no for the busiest zones, you have bought a rebuild rather than a repair. The safety documentation that should accompany those components is a separate question, covered in our standards summary.

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4. What a twenty-year term does to each attraction type

Term length stays abstract until it is applied to a specific ride or frame. Each part of the attraction mix meets those twenty years differently.

4.1 Dodgems: the floor and the control system age at different rates

A dodgem installation is a floor, a ceiling grid, a power supply and a fleet of vehicles. The building elements can outlast the lease. The controllers inside the vehicles, and the ride’s control panel, are electronics with a support horizon set by the manufacturer rather than by the building.

Ask two questions at specification: how many vehicle controllers the operator will hold as spares, and what support period the manufacturer states for the control system. A ride that cannot be repaired because a circuit board left production is a hole in the floor plan, and the lease will not care.

4.2 Carousels: a structural decision disguised as a ride

A carousel needs a base that carries its load and, in most installations, a floor build-up or recess. That base is a permanent alteration. If the ride is replaced mid-term by something with a different footprint, the floor has to be opened again, which means closing the zone, protecting the rest of the venue and redoing the finish.

Specify the base for a plausible range of future rides rather than for the exact model you are buying. The extra cost sits in the slab and the fixings, not in the ride.

4.3 Play frames and net towers: the frame outlives everything attached to it

A steel or timber frame is the longest-lived part of a soft play installation. Pads, netting, slides and loose play are the parts that fail. That gap is a design opportunity: a frame built on standard fixing centres with accessible nodes lets the soft components be renewed zone by zone over a weekend. A welded one-off with cladding fixed from inside has to be demolished to be renewed.

The standards divide along the same line. Soft contained play equipment sits under ASTM F1918 in the United States; playground equipment and surfacing sit under the EN 1176 series in Europe. Neither sets a replacement interval, because both govern design and performance rather than service life. The renewal schedule is your decision, and it belongs in the supply contract rather than in a certificate.

4.4 Role-play zones: the fastest-obsolescing asset in the building

Themed role-play, whether a miniature supermarket, a garage or a café, dates faster than anything else in a venue, because it is judged against what children saw on a screen last month. Built as bespoke joinery, it is expensive to change and tends to survive too long. Built as modular panels with interchangeable graphics and loose props, it can be refreshed in phases without touching the frame.

On a twenty-year lease, budget for the theming to change at least once, and specify it so that the change does not require a building contractor.

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5. The four clauses that decide whether you can replace anything

Lease negotiations usually spend their energy on rent, rent-free periods and break rights. For a play operator, four less glamorous clauses carry more lifetime cost.

5.1 The alterations covenant

Replacing a play frame is an alteration. So is adding a ride, moving a party room wall, or cutting a floor for a carousel base. Most institutional leases require landlord consent for alterations, often qualified so that consent is not unreasonably withheld for non-structural work. The qualification is the part worth negotiating, because it turns a discretionary permission into a process with a timetable.

5.2 Reinstatement at term end

This clause decides whether the fit-out is an asset or a liability on the last day. If reinstatement is drafted as an absolute obligation covering all alterations, you may be required to remove a serviceable structure and make good the floor and walls. If it follows the Code’s reasonable test, the argument is about condition and marketability rather than automatic removal.

5.3 Dilapidations and the schedule of condition

A photographic schedule of condition agreed before you take the unit is the cheapest insurance in the deal. Without it, you inherit every mark on the floor and every tired ceiling tile as your repairing obligation, and the dispute surfaces at exit, when you have least leverage.

5.4 Permitted use

Twenty years is long enough that the concept will change. A permitted use drafted around children’s indoor play may not cover a later shift toward competitive ninja, adult fitness sessions or licensed events. Widening the use class at signing costs a negotiation; widening it at year eight costs a consent application and possibly a premium.

The trade-off: every one of these clauses is negotiable, and each concession usually comes back as rent or as a shorter rent-free period. The question is not whether you can win them all. It is which one you cannot afford to lose, and on a 20-year term that is almost always reinstatement.

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6. What to write into the equipment contract now

The lease sets the obligation. The supply contract decides whether you can meet it at a sane cost. These eight terms separate a fit-out you can maintain from a fit-out you have to demolish.

1. A component schedule with part numbers. Not a brochure. A list of every wear part, its part number, its unit price at handover, and the warranty that applies to that subsystem rather than to the whole installation.
2. A parts availability commitment. Ten years is a reasonable ask for a venue on a 20-year lease. Get it in writing, with a named obligation that survives the supplier being acquired or exiting the category.
3. A demountability test. The widest single module, with padding removed, must pass the delivery route and the unit’s own doors. If it was assembled in place because it would not fit any other way, it can only be replaced by demolishing part of the building.
4. As-built drawings, fixing schedule and load data. You will need these when a future landlord, insurer or structural engineer asks what is holding the frame down, and when you sell the business.
5. Material and fire documentation per batch. Soft components should arrive with traceable documentation for the batch supplied, not a generic certificate for a material family.
6. Warranty transferability. If the lease is assigned or the business is sold, the equipment warranty should travel with the asset rather than dying with the original company.
7. A phased replacement plan. Which zones can be closed independently, for how long, and what temporary protection the rest of the venue needs while work runs at night.
8. Maintenance access. Service gaps behind frames, hatches to net tensioning points, and a route to every pad that will wear. Access designed after installation is access you will never use.

None of this is free. Documentation, parts holding and modular design all carry a price, and a supplier who quotes the same headline number with and without them is telling you which version you are buying.

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7. Sizing the replacement reserve

The arithmetic is simple and almost nobody runs it before signing. For each component group, multiply the replacement cost by the number of times you expect to replace it inside the term, then divide by the term. Sum the groups and you have the annual contribution the venue has to earn before it earns anything for its owner.

Annual reserve = Σ (replacement cost × replacements in term) ÷ term in years
Reserve per sq ft per year = annual reserve ÷ gross internal area
Monthly set-aside = annual reserve ÷ 12

Two rules make the number honest. Start the reserve at opening rather than at the first failure, because a reserve started at year eight is a loan you forgot to arrange. And re-price it every year against current quotes, because the figure that matters is what a replacement costs when you buy it, not what it cost when you planned it.

Where those numbers came from: nowhere. They are placeholders chosen to make the arithmetic visible, not benchmarks, and they are not 360 Play’s figures. Substitute your own supplier quotes before you use the output for anything.

Run on a 20,000 sq ft unit, that placeholder total is about $1.53 per sq ft per year, or roughly $2,542 a month. It is not a large number next to rent. It is a large number next to the profit line of a venue in its first two years, which is exactly when the reserve has to start.

The same arithmetic explains why a shorter lease can look cheaper and behave worse. On a five-year term the reserve covers one partial refresh, so the business plan looks lighter. The cost has not disappeared; it has moved to whoever takes the unit next, usually with a discount on the price of the business.

If the opening itself slips, the reserve is the least of the problems, and the carry cost of a late opening is worth modelling separately. We worked through that arithmetic in the 100-day delay model.

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8. Why the accounts will disagree with the floor

Accounting treats a long lease as an asset. The floor treats it as a maintenance schedule. The gap between the two is where operators get surprised.

IFRS 16 requires a lessee to recognise a right-of-use asset and a lease liability for leases longer than twelve months, unless the underlying asset is of low value. The liability is the obligation to make lease payments; the asset is the right to use the premises, depreciated over the lease term.

That produces a smooth cost line for twenty years. It does not produce a play frame that still looks new at year twelve. The book value of the right to use the building declines in a straight line while the physical asset inside it declines along its traffic curve.

For a single-site operator this matters at three moments: refinancing, sale, and lease renewal. A buyer prices the capital expenditure still to come, not the book value of a right-of-use asset. That is why depreciation schedules and replacement invoices rarely agree, and why the reserve in section 7 is a management number rather than an accounting one.

The US equivalent, ASC 842, reaches a similar place by a different route. If you are building in a market where the accounting is unfamiliar, the practical question stays the same: what does the model assume about replacement, and is that assumption written down anywhere.

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9. Decision rules by term length

Different terms call for different equipment strategies. These rules are the short version of everything above, and they assume a landlord who will negotiate but not concede everything.

The deciding variable is not the size of the unit. A 20,000 sq ft site on a five-year lease is a trading experiment; the same site on twenty years is infrastructure. Infrastructure gets specified for the second owner, the third manager, and the replacement that happens after you have stopped thinking about the building.

360 Play may have gone through all of this, and none of it is visible from outside. What is visible is the term, and the term is the constraint the drawings will later have to answer for.

Three things you can do today

1. Read your reinstatement clause before your rent review. If it is absolute rather than reasonable, ask what it would cost to remove the fit-out in year twenty, then put that number in the model beside the refresh budget.

2. Ask two suppliers for a wear-part schedule and a parts-availability term. A supplier who cannot produce either has told you what a replacement will feel like in year nine. Our design and delivery process starts from the drawing, which is where these decisions are still cheap.

3. Fix your floor plan against the shell before you fix the equipment list. Clear height, column positions and access routes decide which frames are even possible, which is why we treat ceiling height as the first number to check and occupant load as the second.

Get a free design and quote →

If you are modelling a fit-out on a long lease, send us the unit’s dimensions and the term. We will tell you which parts of the specification are worth spending on, and which savings only look real on the tender sheet.

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FAQ

How long is a typical soft play unit lease?

There is no single market standard. In UK institutional schemes, terms of ten to twenty-five years are common, and 360 Play’s 20-year letting at Broadway Plaza sits at the long end. Elsewhere the range shifts with landlord type and financing. What matters for your model is the term you actually sign, not the average, because the replacement budget scales with it directly.

Can I replace play equipment during a lease without the landlord’s consent?

Usually not, if the equipment is fixed to the structure. Most commercial leases treat replacement and additions as alterations and require consent, often qualified so that it cannot be unreasonably withheld. Ask for that qualification in writing, with a response timetable, before you sign. Loose items such as benches and soft seating normally sit outside the covenant; bolted frames do not.

Who owns the play structure at the end of the lease?

The building owner owns anything that has become a fixture, and the lease decides whether you must remove it and make good. That is why reinstatement wording matters more than the ownership question. An absolute obligation can require removal of equipment that is still serviceable; a reasonable obligation usually turns on condition and on the landlord’s plans for the unit.

Does a longer lease make equipment cheaper?

It lowers the annual charge and raises the total exposure. Spreading a replacement over twenty years produces a smaller yearly figure than spreading it over five, but it also means you will buy that replacement at least once, probably twice, at prices you cannot fix today. A long term rewards equipment that can be repaired in place; it punishes equipment that has to be rebuilt.

What should the equipment contract guarantee beyond the warranty?

Four things: a wear-part schedule with part numbers and prices, a stated period of parts availability, demountable modules that fit the delivery route, and as-built drawings with fixing and load data. Warranty covers defects. Those four cover the decade after the warranty ends, which is the part of the lease nobody negotiates.

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Sources

1. Amusements & Attractions (InterGame), “DP Leisure to launch eighth 360 Play location”, 29 October 2026. amusementsandattractions.com
2. IFRS Foundation, “IFRS 16 Leases”, issued January 2016. ifrs.org
3. ASTM International, “F1918-21 Standard Safety Performance Specification for Soft Contained Play Equipment”. astm.org
4. BSI, “BS EN 1176-1:2017+A1:2023 Playground equipment and surfacing. General safety requirements and test methods”. en-standard.eu
5. Bevan Brittan, “Code for Leasing Business Premises 2020: a Code with more bite?”, August 2020, on the RICS professional statement effective 1 September 2020. bevanbrittan.com
6. Sintons, “Lease Code 2020: a move toward making the legal drafting process more efficient”, 2020, on the mandatory heads of terms and the reinstatement provision. sintons.co.uk