Who can be listed
Any UK indoor play venue that is a registered company or a registered charity, that can supply the five facts, and that signs the declaration. That is the whole eligibility test. We do not select on quality, because selecting on quality would mean assessing quality, and we have not assessed anywhere.
We do not list a venue that will not supply all five facts. A partial entry would imply we had chosen not to publish something rather than that the venue had chosen not to disclose it.
The five facts, and why these five
Each one was chosen because a parent can check it independently, without our help and without taking our word for anything.
- Registered company number. Checkable on the public register. Tells you who is behind the business and whether the filings are current.
- Public liability insurer and policy expiry month. Checkable in the sense that the insurer exists and is regulated. We publish the insurer rather than the sum insured, because a sum is a number a venue can type and an insurer is an institution.
- Date of last documented risk assessment. A date is a fact about a process. It tells you whether the assessment is a living document. It says nothing about its quality, and we do not claim otherwise.
- Accessibility provision. Physical facts about the building: step free access, accessible toilet, changing facilities, hoist, whether a carer goes free. All of these can be observed on arrival, which makes a false claim detectable.
- Quiet or sensory friendly sessions. Whether they run and how often. Checkable against the venue’s own timetable in about ten seconds.
Rates
| Item | Terms | Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Register entry | Twelve months, alphabetical, labelled paid, five facts, no commentary | One published rate, identical for every venue, invoiced annually. There is no second tier and no negotiated rate. |
| Register renewal | Twelve months, facts re confirmed and re signed | The same rate as a new entry. There is no loyalty discount, because a discount would create a class of venue. |
| Newsletter sponsor line | One issue, one labelled line, fixed position below the editorial, no link inside any article | One published rate per issue. Multi issue bookings are the same rate multiplied, with no volume discount. |
Rates are quoted on request and are the same for every enquirer. We publish the structure here rather than a figure because a figure printed on a page goes out of date and then misleads. What is fixed and published is that there is one rate for each item, that it is the same for everybody, and that there is no way to pay more for a better position.
What we will not sell, at any price
- A mention in an article. No article on this site names a venue. This is not a pricing question and there is no figure that changes it.
- A position, a ranking or a score. The register is alphabetical. There is no featured slot, no premium placement and no bidding.
- Any change to safety guidance. No sponsor, advertiser or listed venue may request, suggest or influence a change to a five minute check, an age fit block or any other piece of guidance. A request to do so ends the arrangement.
- The word safe. We will not describe any venue as safe, approved, vetted, recommended, trusted or endorsed, because we have inspected nowhere.
- Removal of a competitor. We do not act on complaints from competitors.
- A link in an article body. There are none, for anyone, ever.
- Editorial sight or approval. No advertiser sees a piece before publication and no advertiser is told what is coming.
- Our email list. Subscriber addresses are never sold, rented or shared.
How the sponsor line is labelled
The newsletter sponsor line is marked as advertising, in the same size type as the surrounding text, in a fixed position after the editorial content. It is not written by us in the voice of the publication and it is not presented as a recommendation.
The rules on what advertising must look like and how it must be distinguished from editorial are set by the CAP Code and enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority. We treat those rules as a floor rather than a target.
Why the model is built this way
The obvious way to make money from a site about play centres is to rank them. Ranking is what readers ask for and what venues will pay for, and it is the thing we are least able to do truthfully, because it would require inspecting places and we cannot.
So the model sells the only thing we can sell without pretending: a venue’s own disclosed facts, in a fixed order, labelled as paid, with an explicit statement that it is not an endorsement. It will make less money than a ranking. It has the advantage of being true.