Safeguarding in church hall settings/when others use your building....

[Guest]

Can anyone let me know what / how they deal with other users in the building. We use one room in a church based building and we sometimes have groups in at the same time using the hall that is in the same building. Also when church members are wanting to access the building or workmen they have hired what are your procedures for this to ensure safeguarding requirements are met? It seems with ours lately we are last to know about anything and is really effecting the children being able to go outdoors with work being done and people coming to the building without us even being told. Would love some suggestions as I am attending a church meeting soon so would like a plan in place to suggest! Thanks in advance ?

Edited February 1, 2017 by xAx

[PaseyLtd]

Hi, used to work for a pre-school withing a village hall, mulit-user setting!

 

You probably already have a risk assessment of the processes you follow whenever anyone else is in the building with clear procedures of how you intend to safeguard the children - for example visitors of any kind sign in and never left unattended with the children.

 

Perhaps also a word with your church hall committee explaining how you need to adhere to the safeguarding standards to maintain your registration - sometimes they simply don't realise - and ask them to keep you informed of any prospective visitors. Explain that when any work is due to take place you will need to complete a risk assessment prior to it starting too.

 

Also do you pay any sort of rent and if so what is in your contract? As a paying customer it is not your job to let others into the hall - it is up to them to either ask you or for the clerk/caretaker to come along and see to any visitors and or other users. You could of course offer to take on this service for a fee/reduction in your rent!!!!

 

In all honesty having been in the same situation; once I had spoken to our village hall committee they had a greater understanding and used to either email to check if we were willing to show other users around and even included us in the planning process for renovations so that we were aware of any building works.

[playgroup1]

We had to be quite strict with the church people we rent our building from and insist that no-one can come into the building while we are there (we do rent the whole building though, apart from when we have 15 minutes overlap with the OAP lunch club). We did have to put an extra lock on the main door to prevent the umpteen people with keys just letting them selves in and I have refused to let some church people in when they say "I just need to put this in the fridge for our meeting later."

Building works are done during holidays. You might need to keep saying Safeguarding regulations and Ofsted a lot and say how you could be shut down if they don't keep to the rules.

[ladybirds1991]

We run from a church hall and we have stipulated that unless urgent repairs are required i.e like a broken toilet cistern needs replacing or something like that which would affect us if it was out of use! we do not allow anyone else into the building while we are running.