29 Sep Setting the Standard
Nothing beats reading the 147 pages of EU toy safety regulations in 2009/48/EC – and that’s the shortened version. It’s all been worth it, with Tots Town achieving a Gold Standard award from the Royal Society for Prevention of Accidents (ROSPA), arguably the UK’s foremost champion of sensible safety advice. They have been giving safety advice for nearly 100 years! Well run companies who demonstrate high safety standards can be awarded a ROSPA Gold Certificate for excellence, and it normally takes a minimum of 3 years. This week we were awarded our Gold Certificate – it took us less than 9 months. Here’s what was said in their assessment summary: The indoor play facility is an excellent role and imagination play themed town with each section representing a different role play environment accessible to all abilities. Excellent management procedures are implemented. The facility is very well managed and presented to a high standard.
Tots Town aims to be the industry leader in children’s role play, with venues full of imagination built to the highest standards and quality. So what makes a good safety system? Named individuals that have taken responsibility for safety, competent experts undertaking detailed risk assessments, formal staff training systems, detailed knowledge of rules and regulations, regular reviews and constantly checking that what you are doing is truly working. Want to know more…the Health & Safety Executive have some useful information on their website http://www.hse.gov.uk/managing/are-you-doing-enough.htm
But what about having fun? As well as inspecting indoor role play centres, ROSPA also inspect many fantastic outdoor adventure play areas and they have a great motto “Play should be as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible”. Spot on we say. Whether it’s at a swimming pool, soft play, on holiday or in a play park, ROSPA know that parents will need to provide a level of supervision to suit the particular play environment and the temperament of their child. It’s the same when parents visit Tots Town – the play centre was cleverly built to make it easy for parents to play along. Of course, there is still time for great coffee and locally baked cake as adult treats but even that’s been designed to make supervision easy.
You can read more of our blogs at https://tots-town.co.uk/diary/ and discover more about how we work with brilliant people to open and grow their own role play venues here.