Nurseries and early years
The smallest sites we work on, and the ones where the door matters most.
Nursery managers, pre-school leaders and early-years chains
Where the entire security question is usually one door and one list.
An early-years setting does not need a security system. It needs the front door to work properly, a reliable record of who collected whom, and a way of knowing who is inside if the alarm goes.
We say that plainly because nurseries get sold far more than they need. A four-camera proposal for a forty-place setting is a supplier looking at a budget rather than a site.
Schedule 1 of the Act does place childcare and early-years premises in the standard tier, but the 200-person threshold means most settings are out of scope of Martyn’s Law entirely.
What a nursery actually needs to solve
The front door
Answered from wherever the practitioner is, not from a desk nobody is at.
Collection
A record of who collected whom, and when.
Who is inside
Staff, children and visitors, available if the alarm goes.
Unaccompanied visitors
Which should never happen and occasionally does.
Out of hours
A small site, easily broken into, with equipment worth taking.
Parents at the door
At the two busiest fifteen-minute windows of the day.
Usually three things
And frequently we talk a setting out of the fourth.
A video intercom
At the entrance, answered on a phone that moves with whoever is free.
Access control on that one door
Staff credentials, no keys in circulation, revoked in seconds.
A visitor record
Simple, and it produces a list at the assembly point.
A camera at the entrance, sometimes
Outside, covering the approach. Not inside the rooms.
Never in the rooms
Cameras where young children are cared for are a decision with safeguarding and staff-relations consequences that a supplier should not be driving.
An alarm, if the site warrants it
Many do not.
Our position, stated because you will be asked
Some settings install cameras in rooms, sometimes at parents’ request. It is lawful in principle with the right basis and a proper DPIA, and it is genuinely contested — staff bodies raise legitimate concerns about surveillance of practitioners, and it changes the culture of a room.
Our position is that we will discuss it, we will not lead with it, and we will not propose it as a solution to a problem that is really about the front door. If you decide to do it, do it with your DPO, your staff and your parents involved, not as a line on a quotation.
Questions from people in your position
Does Martyn's Law apply to us?
Is this affordable for a small setting?
Start with a survey, not a quotation.
We walk the site, look at what you already have, and tell you what would genuinely help — including where the answer is that you do not need anything.
Book a free site survey Call 01727 822 833Tell us about the site
Send us a few details and an engineer — not a call centre — will come back to you within one working day.
This is not a monitoring centre
If you are dealing with an incident now, call 999. This line is monitored during office hours.