Children: Protection

The safety of our youngest children is our utmost priority, and we continually monitor and review safeguarding requirements for early years settings to make sure children are kept safe.

In September 2025 the department implemented changes to the early year’s foundation stage statutory framework to strengthen safeguarding requirements across early years settings, including enhanced expectations on safer recruitment, child absences, safer eating, safeguarding training and whistleblowing. We also introduced a new safeguarding training annex setting out what safeguarding training must cover. To support the sector, we are developing a safeguarding training package in collaboration with the NSPCC aligned to the new criteria, which will be free to access online.

The department is appointing an expert panel to inform the development of guidance for the early years sector on digital devices and CCTV within safeguarding. This guidance will consider whether CCTV should be mandated and will set out best practice, technical advice and clear expectations.

In additional from April, we are funding Ofsted to improve inspection quality and consistency through stronger quality assurance and targeted inspector training. We are also funding Ofsted to inspect all new early years providers within 18 months of opening and to move towards inspecting all providers at least once every four years, compared to the current six year window.

As announced in the ‘Best Start in Life’ publication, the department is working collaboratively with Ofsted to introduce reporting on nursery chain groups to address issues spanning across groups of providers. The publication can be found here: https://beststartinlife.gov.uk/.