The venue rule
We do not name, describe, rank, review, rate or locate any play centre, soft play venue, trampoline park, farm park, adventure playground or climbing centre. Not one, anywhere on this site, including in examples, including in passing, and including venues we are confident exist.
The reason is that we have carried out no inspection of anywhere and have no means of doing so. Naming a venue implies a check. For a children’s venue, an implied check that was never carried out is a genuine harm rather than a technical error. Where a subject appeared to require naming venues in order to be written, we changed the subject rather than the rule.
Sourcing
Every article cites between three and five institutional sources. We cite public bodies, published standards and primary legislation: the Health and Safety Executive, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, the British Standards Institution, the Food Standards Agency, the UK Health Security Agency, the NHS, the Advertising Standards Authority and the CAP codes, Ofsted where registered childcare is genuinely in scope, and legislation on legislation.gov.uk.
We name British Standards by number and title only where we are confident the standard exists and that we have the number right. Everywhere else we describe a standard by what it does. That is why you will see BS EN 1176 and PAS 5000 named and other standards described by function: the second form is less impressive and more truthful.
Statistics, studies and prices
We publish no injury statistic, no participation figure, no market size and no research finding that we cannot attribute to a named source you can go and read. In practice this means this site contains far fewer numbers than most writing on the subject. That is deliberate. A statistic invented to make a point is worse than no statistic, because it survives being repeated.
We publish no prices. Not for admission, not for parties, not for annual passes. Prices vary by region, by day, by season and by venue, they change constantly, and a figure we published would be wrong somewhere within a week. Our article on cost discusses what you are paying for and how to compare offers, and quotes no figures at all.
Tables that present a working frame rather than a measurement say so directly underneath. That line is not boilerplate. It is there because a table looks like data even when it is reasoning.
Imagery, and the deliberate absence of children
Every photograph on this site shows play equipment as form and material. Ball pit spheres, foam block edges, netting geometry, a slide curve, padded flooring, climbing holds on a plain wall, a folded crash mat.
There are no children in any image on this site, and there are no adults either. That is a deliberate policy, not a coincidence of what was available. A publication about children’s safety that illustrates itself with pictures of children is trading on the thing it claims to be protecting. Images of children also invite the reader to imagine a specific venue, which is precisely what a site that names no venues should avoid. So the imagery is equipment, material and light, and nothing else. No faces, no bodies, no venue interiors that read as a real place, no signage, no legible text and no logos.
The images are generated rather than photographed on location, for the same reason: a photograph taken inside a real venue is a photograph of a real venue, and we do not publish those.
Links
External links go to public bodies, published standards and primary legislation. They carry
rel="nofollow", they open in a new tab, and they are cited because they are public and
checkable rather than because anyone there has reviewed this site.
There are no commercial links in any article on this site. No affiliate links, no paid links, no sponsored mentions, no links to any business of any kind. Every article carries a disclosure block saying so.
Language
British English. Plain sentences. We write for a tired parent reading on a phone with one hand, which means short paragraphs, large type and no throat clearing before the point.
We do not moralise about screen time, parenting choices, packed lunches or how long anyone stays at a play centre. A parent choosing an indoor play session on a wet Tuesday is making a perfectly good decision and does not need our opinion on it.
Where our answer blocks come from
Each article opens with a short answer block. It is written by the same desk that writes the article and it is a summary of that article, not a separate claim. If the two ever disagree, the article is the one to believe and the block is a mistake we would like reported.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it and say that we have. We correct in place, with a note, rather than quietly. Errors of fact are corrected as soon as we can confirm the correction. Matters of judgement we will argue about, publicly if it is interesting.
The one category we act on immediately, without waiting to argue, is anything that could lead a parent to a wrong conclusion about a child’s safety. Write to us via the contact page.
Separation of commercial and editorial
The register and the newsletter sponsor line are the only income. Neither has any route into editorial. There is no process by which a paying venue could request a change to a page, and there is no page on this site that mentions a paying venue, because register entries carry no commentary and articles carry no venue names. The rates and the refusals are published on the criteria page.