Visitors to your setting

[mumofone]

I know all visitors to your setting should be logged but do they have to sign in/sign to confirm their presence? What's the OFSTED requirement here?

[moggy]

I know all visitors to your setting should be logged but do they have to sign in/sign to confirm their presence? What's the OFSTED requirement here?

Ofsted do not have requirements, they just refer you to the EYFS.

EYFS does not state anything about logging or signing in visitors.

You need to RA it yourself- if an allegation was made that the plumber assaulted a child in your setting you would want to be able to check if the plumber was there or not at the time- so you may choose to write a diary of visitors.
You may choose to ask everyone to sign in/out- but do you want to do that? To friends and family too?
I choose to write the times in/out myself in my own diary as I find that less intrusive to what may be an enjoyable visit from friends with other children coming to play.
I choose not to ask visitors to write their own details down as I know what details I want to record and I can read my own handwriting better than the aforementioned plumber's scrawl.
I choose to almost never have tradespeople visiting in working hours- I have a day off a week for these appointments.

Remember, a lot of the 'ways of working' we might read about are for nurseries where there could be people coming and going all day, let in by different members of staff who may go off duty before that busy plumber leaves the premises so another member of staff needs to know who is where etc etc. We are not a nursery. We are a home.

[mumofone]

Ofsted do not have requirements, they just refer you to the EYFS. EYFS does not state anything about logging or signing in visitors. You need to RA it yourself- if an allegation was made that the plumber assaulted a child in your setting you would want to be able to check if the plumber was there or not at the time- so you may choose to write a diary of visitors. You may choose to ask everyone to sign in/out- but do you want to do that? To friends and family too? I choose to write the times in/out myself in my own diary as I find that less intrusive to what may be an enjoyable visit from friends with other children coming to play. I choose not to ask visitors to write their own details down as I know what details I want to record and I can read my own handwriting better than the aforementioned plumber's scrawl. I choose to almost never have tradespeople visiting in working hours- I have a day off a week for these appointments. Remember, a lot of the 'ways of working' we might read about are for nurseries where there could be people coming and going all day, let in by different members of staff who may go off duty before that busy plumber leaves the premises so another member of staff needs to know who is where etc etc. We are not a nursery. We are a home.


Thanks moggy this is really helpful and makes perfect sense. I think my question arose from the fact that when people report back on their OFSTED inspections their first line is often that they asked the inspector to sign in..which got me thinking..