Survey playground underwritten by church (5)
I believe the answer is:
recce
'survey playground' is the definition.
'recce' can be an answer for 'survey' (I've seen this before). I'm not sure about the 'playground' bit.
'underwritten by church' is the wordplay.
'underwritten by' becomes 'rec' (I can't explain this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'church' becomes 'ce' (abbreviation for Church of England).
'rec'+'ce'='RECCE'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for recce that I've seen before include "Survey (sl.)" , "Scout" , "Exploratory survey (colloq.)" , "Exploratory foray (mil. colloq.)" , "Preliminary survey" .)