Recent experience of care provision
To ensure reviews are relevant and current, all reviews must be based on first-hand (in person) experience of provision of nursery services within the past 12 months.
Who can submit Reviews?
Reviews of nurseries can only be submitted by:
Parents of a child who attends the nursery
Individuals responsible for the child, including guardians, foster parents, relatives, nannies, carers or godparents
Who can't submit Reviews?
Reviews are not accepted from the following connections, even if they are parents/individual responsible for a child who attends the nursery:
Members of staff, ex-members of staff (within the last 12 months), owners, volunteers, students and work experience participants
Anyone with a professional connection to the nursery (e.g. entertainer)
Anyone who is an owner or member of staff of a direct competitor
Immediate family of all the above (mother, step-mother, father, step-father, sister, step-sister, brother, step-brother, daughter, step-daughter, son, step-son, spouse/partner).
For clarity, these restrictions apply to the nursery and, where relevant, its wider childcare organisation. This may include other nurseries or childcare services under common ownership, control or management, or operating as part of the same group, franchise or branded network, even where they are separately owned or operated.
They do not automatically apply to employees of a wider non-childcare organisation that owns or provides the nursery, unless the employee is involved in the management, operation or oversight of the nursery or its childcare services.
The exception is the competitor restriction, which applies only to direct competitors of the nursery being reviewed. Direct competitor means another nursery or childcare provider that competes for the same families in the same local market as the nursery being reviewed.
Asking for reviews and incentives
If nurseries are asking for reviews, they should do so in a fair, neutral and unbiased way.
Nurseries are not permitted to:
Offer incentives to write a review (including discounts, free prize draws or any special treatment)
Selectively solicit reviews
Pressure parents/individuals responsible for a child to submit a positive review or remove a negative review
Prohibit or discourage parents/individuals responsible for a child from posting a negative review
Ask parents/individuals responsible for a child to remove their reviews in return for a discount or incentive
Submitting reviews directly
Reviews are not accepted if they are submitted on behalf of a parent/individual responsible for a child. This includes copying in-house comment cards, letters or reviews from other websites and submitting them as reviews.
Contact Details
For reviews submitted online through daynurseries.co.uk, we require the reviewer’s personal email address and telephone number. The email address of the nursery, or a member of staff at the nursery, will not be permitted. Reviewers who do not have their own personal email address should submit their review on a Review Card.
For reviews submitted on Review Cards, we require either the reviewer’s personal email address or telephone number.
Reviewer Identity and Anonymous Reviews
Reviews cannot be submitted anonymously to daynurseries.co.uk. We require the reviewer’s full name and contact details so that we can authenticate reviews and help ensure they are genuine.
The reviewer’s full name is normally made available to the nursery. This helps the nursery understand who has provided the feedback, respond personally where appropriate, and investigate or address any concerns raised.
Your full name is not displayed publicly on daynurseries.co.uk. When your review is published, we display your first name and surname initial, or you can choose to display only your initials.
The nursery must not include your full name or contact details in a public reply to your review.
Language & Communication Support
Reviews must be submitted to daynurseries.co.uk in English, but reviewers do not need to speak English.
The named reviewer must complete and submit the review themselves. They may use translation software, speech-to-text technology or other self-service accessibility tools. Another person must not write, translate, transcribe, edit or submit the review on the reviewer’s behalf.
Authentication will normally be carried out by email, allowing reviewers to use self-service translation tools where needed. Where additional verification is required, we may use another suitable method, which may include a telephone call with an independent interpreter or other communication support approved by daynurseries.co.uk.
We will not reject a review solely because of the reviewer’s language or communication needs. However, a review may not be published if, after reasonable and proportionate attempts, we are unable to authenticate it.
Multiple Reviews from the same Reviewer
When a Review is submitted by someone who has previously submitted a Review, the latest Review replaces the older Review. The older Review is no longer published and does not count towards the Review Score.
Multiple Reviews from different Reviewers about the same child experience
Every review we receive is individually moderated, including an assessment of the reviewer’s connection and experience. As a general guideline, we consider up to five reviews per child experience to be a reasonable representation of their care experience. Publishing more than five reviews may risk distorting the overall picture of the care provided.
General
To ensure reviews are relevant and current, all reviews must be based on first-hand, in-person experience of provision of nursery services within the past 12 months.
Content Standards
Reviews must:
Be relevant (about the care/service provided)
Be first-hand in person experiences (no second-hand information, rumours or quotations from other sources)
Be based on an experience of the provision of nursery services (ie if the nursery services are cancelled before they have been provided, then the review will not be compliant)
Be submitted within 12 months - the child/children must have been cared for within the nursery setting during the 12 months prior to submitting the review
Be a maximum of 1,000 characters (with spaces) in length, which is approximately 150 words
Be written in English and comply with acceptable standards of spelling and grammar
Be complete ie all Review fields must be completed
Comply with the laws applicable in England and Wales and in any country from which it is posted
Reviews must not:
Be defamatory (for example, allegations of abuse, material negligence, or serious criminal behaviour - without that setting any limit on the interpretation of the general term defamatory)
Be obscene, offensive, hateful, threatening, harassing or unlawful
Constitute discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or, age or promote such discrimination by others
Contain abusive language
Disclose the full name, telephone number, email address or postal address of any individual. You may include personal data about yourself in a review. You may include first names of other people and information about their circumstances in a review where this is appropriate given the context, however publication will be at our reasonable discretion, for example, where a negative or prejudicial comment has been made, we may remove personal data. You must not include any other personal data in a review
Contain references to other specific Reviews
Stereotype sections of society
Contain any reference to the Review Score of the organisation/business being reviewed
Name other organisations/businesses in a way that is misleading, promotional, defamatory, or irrelevant (at our reasonable discretion we will remove it).
Infringe any copyright, database right or trade mark of any other person
Breach any legal duty owed to a third party, such as a contractual duty or a duty of confidence
Be in contempt of court or breach of a court order
Be made in an attempt to blackmail any person
Be made with a view to gain for the person submitting the content/comment or for another, or with the intent to cause loss to another, in exchange for offering to remove a ‘negative’ review or post a ‘positive’ review
Impersonate any person, or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person
Give the impression that the Review emanates from us if this is not the case
Advocate, promote, incite any third party to commit, or assist any unlawful or criminal act
Contain a statement which you know or believe, or have reasonable grounds for believing, that members of the public to whom the statement is, or is to be, published are likely to understand as a direct or indirect encouragement or other inducement to the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism
Contain any advertising or promote any services or web links to other sites
Our general approach is that we take a neutral stance in factual disputes between nurseries and reviewers. If a nursery disagrees with the reviewer over the experience, we recommend that the nursery writes a reply to the review sharing their version of events so that website users can see both perspectives.