Stairgate problems

[Ripeberry]

Hi, my house has a really badly designed flight of stairs as it has a wide bottom step that sticks out from the banister and on the wall side it has a "decorative" dado rail type skirting board.
When my children were little we used to have a metal pressure fitted gate and it was reasonable but i found it quite dangerous especially going downstairs.
I go myself one of those Kiddigates that operate like a roller blind and due to the skirting board it is 1inch from the next stair up from the bottom stair.
So when it is closed, if you get down you can see a gap.
It's handy for the cats as they can just about squeeze under it.
I got my 4yr old to test it and after lots of grunting and huffind she managed to squeeze under it :(
But what are Ofsted like if you do modifications to safety equipment?
I've got a way to remedy the gap by just placing a piece of board between the closed roller blind gate and the stairs, that way nothing can crawl underneath and it would be easy for an adult to remore but not a child.
Do you think that would be acceptable or to see if i can get away with them not noticing :rolleyes:

[FizzysFriends]

Why can't you put the roller stair gate so its on the stair so there is no gap on the bottom? Usually you need to put a piece of wood on the wall the same thickness of the skiting board so that the gate is level.

[Ripeberry]

The skirting board is almost 2inches wide and husband does not want great big blocks of wood on the wall :( Suppose i could cut into the skirting board but he will like that even less!

[tulip0803]

I have this problem too and My DH did put a battern tomake it fit. Even so nothing in this house is straight & the gate is closer to the bannister post at the bottom than the top. I also had to place it on the second step up as the bannister post is there & there is nothing at the bottom step.

Not sure about bits of wood though. You would have to risk assess. I could slip and hit a child that tried to come through. When I was in England I didn;t have one on the stairs as all the children (even babies) knew not to go up. I had one on the living room door when they first started crawling. OFSTED were fine then (things have changed now though with EYFS) but CSSIW insisted I had them.

[Kes]

I had this problem too. Hubby has now fixed the stair gate to the end of the bannister across to the wall. So not across the bottom of the stairs at all it cuts off my coat peg area so they can't get to the stairs in the first place. Hope that makes sense. Don't know how your house is laid out so don't know if it would work for you.

Kerry.

[liza]

Hi,

We used to do similar to Kes, I put the gate (with an extension) across the hallway, so they couldn't get to the stairs, kitchen or front door!

Now we have a lindam one that is screwed to the wall on the secong step and that seemed to work. It is also one that you can leave the fittings on the wall, but remove the whole gate when not using it!

Liz