Paperwork from OFSTED

[Tanith]

Has anyone else recently asked for an alteration to their registration and been amazed at the paperwork they now require to be completed?

I asked for my overnight care to be reinstated - I took a break for a while and let it lapse. I was asked to supply risk assessments, plans, equipment lists, proposed use of rooms - you name it!
I've just had a friend over, tearing her hair out over the variations form - it is pages long! They want her to measure her rooms and calculate the cubic space available to the children among other things.

What is going on? I thought they were supposed to reduce our paperwork. Are they hoping we'll give up so they can save money on new certificates or something?

You should have risk assessments anyway but on mine I just put that I already have the equipment as I was already registered and it was for existing children, I had a floor plan as its anew build. It doesn't looks bad as you think if you're already childminding you should have everything in place and none of the forms have taken me more than half an hour, they were super speedy when I applied for overnight and I had my certificate in 2 days.

The risk assessments drive me crazy.

Update: OFSTED rang her and asked where she got the form from because there's several extra pages he's never seen before. :) (you couldn't make it up!)

Er, well, you sent it!!

He says he can't see why she needed to do all that and he's granted the variation.

I must say, asking someone with 40+ years of experience in minding and fostering, who they graded as Good last year, to measure her rooms before they'll let her look after an extra child for a couple of hours was just unbelievable!

Bloody typical.

The space etc is to check she has enough room for the extra child, I've filled it in loads of times and never thought it strange , maybe they were new? I just keep the template on the computer saved then amend the details of the variation.