Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of making the (a) installation and (b) use of CCTV recordings in private nurseries a formal requirement for Ofsted inspections.

The department’s priority is to grow high-quality, affordable and flexible education and care for children whilst ensuring their safety, giving every child the best start to life and delivering on our Plan for Change. For this reason, we continually monitor and review safeguarding requirements for early years settings to make sure children are kept as safe as possible.

The department is responsible for setting the standards which early years settings such as nurseries must follow. These are set out in the early years foundation stage (EYFS) statutory framework. The department has responsibility for policy on inspection and registration, but how it is implemented is for Ofsted to decide whilst also remaining accountable to Parliament.

The decision to install and use camera surveillance equipment in a nursery is a matter for individual providers to determine based on their own risk assessment and policies.

If a nursery uses camera surveillance equipment, they must comply with the regulations in the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation and should follow the guidance published by the Information Commissioner’s Office.