Derbyshire has been named and shamed as having the dirtiest soft play areas in the UK.

In 20 of the most populous counties, Derbyshire has the worst ratio of unsanitary reviews on Tripadvisor. Of the 264 reviews, 72 mention hygiene concerns which equates to 27.3% of the reviews. For one of the soft play areas, almost two-thirds (60%) mention hygiene issues – with smells and dirt being the highest complaints.

The study by Outdoor Toys analysed Tripadvisor reviews, calculating the percentage of reviews mentioning hygienic terms to determine the regions with the dirtiest play areas.

A spokesperson said: ”We, unfortunately, can’t share the specifics on the locations we reviewed as we would never intend to call out businesses directly, and as a result, we chose to omit these soft play centre names from our content."

On the flipside, South Yorkshire was placed third in a list of counties with the cleanest play areas. Out of 881 reviews analysed, only 6.6% mentioned terms relating to dirtiness.