The Risk Assessment Nobody Photographs: Keeping Your Pop-Up Play Zone Safe (And Sane)

There's a moment on every build day — usually around the time the ball pit arrives — when a venue manager appears at our elbow and asks, quietly, 'So... who's responsible if something goes wrong?'

It's a fair question. And it deserves a better answer than the mumble most people get. So here it is: the complete, jargon-free guide to the boring bits that keep pop-up play safe.

First Things First: Whose Ball Pit Is It, Legally Speaking?

When a brand hires us to build a play activation in their space, the question of ownership matters less than the question of control. Under UK health and safety law — principally the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, if you enjoy a bit of light statutory reading — responsibility follows whoever has control over the activity and the premises.

In practice, that means responsibility is shared, and a good contract makes those shares explicit. As the play designer and operator, we carry the day-to-day duty: the equipment, the staffing, the supervision protocols. The venue retains duties over the building itself — fire exits, floor integrity, that sort of thing. The brand, as the commissioning client, needs to satisfy themselves that whoever they've hired is competent.

Nobody needs to be the villain here. It's just a case of everyone knowing their lane.

Insurance: The Policy You Hope You Never Use

Public liability insurance is non-negotiable, full stop. For play activations involving children, you want cover of at least £5 million — many venues and landlords will insist on £10 million before they'll even hand over a key.

A few things worth checking on any policy:

• Does it specifically cover children's play equipment? Some generic event policies have exclusions that would make your solicitor wince.
• Are sub-contractors covered? If your foam flooring comes from a third party, you need to know where their liability ends and yours begins.
• Is there employers' liability in place? It's a legal requirement in the UK if you have anyone working for you, even casual build-day crew.

And here's the tip nobody gives you: get the certificates before the site meeting, not the night before doors open. Venue managers can smell a scramble from a mile off, and it sours a relationship before it's begun.

DBS Checks: When You Need Them and When You Don't

This one trips people up constantly, so let's be clear. A DBS check is required when your staff are doing regulated activity — which, in plain terms, means unsupervised contact with children on a regular basis.

If your activation is a family event where parents stay with their children, and your staff are supervising play rather than caring for children, you generally don't need DBS checks. If you're running a drop-off crèche-style zone where children are left in your charge? Different story entirely — that's regulated activity territory.

The golden rule: know which kind of event you're running, and design the staffing model accordingly. We always say the supervision model should be decided at the design stage, not discovered on the day.

What Actually Happens When a Toddler Trips

Let's paint the picture. A small person takes a tumble in your soft-play zone. Parent is calm-ish. Staff are nearby. What now?

1. First aid first. Every one of our events has at least one paediatric first-aid trained team member on shift. Always.
2. Record it. An incident form gets filled in on the spot — what happened, where, who witnessed it, what was done. Photos of the area help.
3. Check the equipment. If a mat shifted or a seam split, that piece gets taken out of play immediately, whatever the queue looks like.
4. Report if necessary. Under RIDDOR, certain injuries to members of the public must be reported to the HSE — typically ones requiring hospital treatment. Most bumps don't qualify, but you need to know the threshold.

A well-handled trip, documented properly, is a non-event. A poorly handled one, with no paperwork and no trained response, is how small incidents become large claims.

The Risk Assessment: A Living Document, Not a Filing Cabinet Exercise

We've seen risk assessments written once, saved as 'final_v2_REALLYFINAL.doc' and never looked at again. That's not a risk assessment; that's a superstition.

Ours get written for every single site, because every site is different. A smooth gallery floor behaves nothing like an uneven cobble courtyard. A hazard identified and mitigated — edge padding, capacity limits, a one-way flow through the space — is a hazard managed. The document exists to make you think, not to make you compliant.

The Reassurance You Actually Came For

Here's the honest truth from the sharp end: the paperwork is not the hard part. It's the scaffolding around the fun, and once it's up, you barely notice it. Brands come to us worried about liability and leave having watched three hundred children have the time of their lives without a single incident.

The boring bits aren't the enemy of play. They're the reason you can have it.