This is the information I’ve been passed by Gareth Davies at the Council. The approach Gareth suggests sounds sensible to me.

“The swings at the park have been the subject of sustained vandalism for
a period of several months – it appears that the owner (or owners) of
Staffordshire Terrier type dogs have been allowing their pets to chew
the seats. This is a relatively common complaint as the swings are ideal
- if that is the right word – for training the dogs to bite.

Over the last six months or so six seats have been destroyed, along with
a further three on nearby William Scholes fields. Our usual practice
where we have periods of sustained attacks is to remove the seats for a
‘cooling off’ period once it’s clear that the problem is not isolated
and that there’s clearly a person or group of persons abusing the
equipment.

In the case of Gatley Rec, the seats were removed on the 1st of this
month and we’ll now leave them off until early-mid March whilst the dog
wardens and ASBAT teams step up their patrols and increase visibility to
discourage the perpetrators from returning.

So, all being well, the swings will be re-hung in a few weeks time and
certainly in time for the school Easter break. Obviously if the problem
persists we’ll review the situation again, but I’ll keep you up to date
and let you know when they’re back on and if they need to come off
again. It’s a shame that we have to resort to this ‘all or nothing’
approach but it does seem to be the only effective way of counteracting
problems such as this.”