Nobody plans for this. That is exactly why it is worth reading in advance, because the useful actions all happen in the ten minutes after an injury, when you are least inclined to be methodical.
Two different obligations
People conflate these constantly and they are separate things.
The internal record. A business keeps a record of accidents on its premises. In practice this is an accident book or an electronic equivalent. It is the venue's own record, it feeds its risk assessment review, and it is the document that matters most to you.
The external report. Certain incidents must be reported to an enforcing authority under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013, generally known as RIDDOR. This is a legal duty on the responsible person, it applies to specified categories of event, and most injuries in a play centre do not meet the threshold.
Both matter, they matter differently, and it is worth knowing which is which so that you ask for the right thing.
What RIDDOR actually requires for a member of the public
The category that applies to a customer is narrower than people assume. In broad terms, where a member of the public is injured as a result of a work related accident and is taken directly from the scene to hospital for treatment in respect of that injury, the responsible person must report it. There are also separate categories for deaths and for specified dangerous occurrences.
Two things follow. First, a child who is hurt and taken to hospital by ambulance or by you, directly from the venue, in connection with an accident arising out of the business, is very likely in reportable territory. Second, a child who is treated at the venue with a plaster and goes home is not, and that is not a venue avoiding anything.
The HSE's guidance on reportable incidents sets out the categories, and it is written to be readable. If you want to know whether something should have been reported, that is the document.
| Internal accident record | RIDDOR report | |
|---|---|---|
| Who it goes to | The venue's own records | The relevant enforcing authority |
| What triggers it | Any injury on the premises, however minor | Specified categories, including a member of the public taken directly to hospital for treatment following a work related accident |
| Who is responsible | The venue, as a matter of good practice and its own systems | The responsible person, as a legal duty under the 2013 regulations |
| What you should ask for | A full entry, and a copy or a reference | Whether the venue considers it reportable, which is a fair question |
| Why it matters to you | It is the only contemporaneous account that will exist | It puts the event in front of a regulator rather than only the business |
| Typical play centre case | A graze, a bump, a bruise: recorded, not reported | A child taken directly from the venue to hospital for treatment |
A working frame put together by this desk from published guidance and from the plain wording of the standards named on the page. It is not a survey, not a measurement and not drawn from any venue.
What the internal record should contain
The internal record is the one you should actively ask for, and the quality of it varies enormously.
A useful record contains the date and the time, the exact location, what the child was doing, what happened, the injury, what was done about it, who dealt with it, and the name of the person making the record. A poor one says a child fell over.
Specificity matters because the record is the only contemporaneous account that will exist. In six weeks nobody will remember whether it was the yellow slide or the green one, and it may turn out to matter a great deal which.
So when a venue writes it up, read what has been written and correct it there and then if it is wrong or vague. That is not being difficult. It is the moment at which the record can still be accurate.
Getting a copy
Ask for a copy or a reference number. Many venues will give you one. Some will offer a redacted version, which is reasonable, because an accident book may contain other people's information and the venue has data protection obligations of its own.
What matters is that you leave with the date, the time, the location as recorded, and a way to refer to the entry. If the venue will not provide any of that, write your own account before you get in the car, including the name of the member of staff you spoke to.
If a record is later needed and the venue will not produce it, the Information Commissioner's Office publishes guidance on rights of access to personal data, and information about your own child held by a business is personal data.
Photograph the cause
This is the step people miss and regret.
If an injury was caused by something physical, a split mat, an exposed edge, a gap, a loose fitting, photograph it before you leave. Include something for scale and take a wider shot showing where in the room it is.
The reason is not adversarial. It is that a competent venue will fix it today, and that is exactly what you want them to do. The consequence is that the evidence disappears, and if anything later turns on what the condition was, there will be nothing to show.
Take the photograph, then tell them about the hazard so it gets fixed.
- Can you record this in your accident record now, while I am here?
- Can I read what you have written, and can I have a copy or a reference number?
- Is this the sort of incident you would report under RIDDOR?
- Who is your first aider and have they seen my child?
- What are you going to do about the thing that caused it?
Afterwards, medically
The venue's obligations are one thing and your child is another. Head injuries have their own guidance and their own warning signs, and NHS guidance on head injury and concussion sets out what to watch for and when to seek help. If a child cannot bear weight on a limb, or there is obvious deformity, that is an emergency department question.
111 is the right number when you are unsure. 999 is the right number when it is serious. We cover the practical sequence in the piece on what to do if a child is hurt.
Keep whatever medical record results. It establishes what actually happened, independently of anyone's memory.
Records as a pattern
One last point, about what records are for from the venue's side.
A well run business reviews its accident records looking for patterns. Three ankle injuries at the same slide exit in a month is information, and it should produce a change: different matting, a different exit angle, a rule about one at a time. That loop, from record to review to change, is what an accident book is for.
So when you insist on a proper record, you are not only protecting your own position. You are putting a data point into a system that, in a decent venue, will act on it. A venue that records everything carefully and changes nothing has half a system. A venue that records nothing has none.