Investment for increased Ofsted regulation and inspection

On 22 June, the Department for Education announced new investment of over £8 million per year to increase safeguarding standards in the early years sector.

This funding will go towards:

• 3,000 additional unannounced Ofsted visits (tripling the number of visits compared to August 2025).
• Increased number of face-to-face interviews before a provider registers with Ofsted.
• Rapid upgrades to technology systems, “ensuring risk assessments are supported by state-of-the-art technology” and allowing inspectors access to real-time updates to help them intervene earlier.

BBC Panorama investigation

Yesterday evening (24 June), the BBC aired a Panorama investigation, Nursery Scandals: What Went Wrong?, examining recent tragic cases of abuse and failures in safeguarding within nursery settings. Ofsted has served a Welfare Requirements Notice to Bright Horizons chain, which operated a now-closed nursery featured in the programme, over concerns that some nurseries are not meeting safeguarding and welfare requirements.

Ka Lai Brightley-Hodges, Head of Coram PACEY, comments:

“The vast majority of early years and childcare providers are deeply committed to delivering high-quality care and ensuring that children’s safety and wellbeing remain their highest priority. However, as highlighted by the BBC Panorama programme, serious shortcomings and tragic, preventable incidents have occurred, with children and families let down by the systems they place their trust in.

“Every child and family should feel safe, secure and confident in the provider and staff caring for them during their crucial earliest years. Any measures that strengthen consistency, accountability and good practice across the sector are therefore welcomed.

“Improving safeguarding culture requires more than regulatory tweaks. The Government must go further by providing sustained funding and investment to ensure that all types of providers have access to consistent and relevant training, resources and support to maintain the highest standards of care and safeguarding. Childminders and nannies in particular must be better supported to carry out training outside their working hours.

“Importantly, the funding system as a whole needs reform to improve financial stability for providers, giving them freedom to make business decisions such as operating at lower child-to-staff ratios and increasing staffing levels to ensure child safety, reduce workload pressures, and maintain high standards of responsive care.

“We will continue to work with Ofsted to understand how these newly announced changes will operate in practice, particularly their implications for registered childminders and other early years providers.”

Coram PACEY’s inspection resources for childminders

We have updated our Ofsted inspection resource page following last week’s announcement about the updated Ofsted inspection toolkit and supporting documents which will come into effect from 1 September 2026. The changes include strengthened requirements around safer sleep, eating and weaning amongst other changes which you can read about here.