Unable to serve home made cake at nursery - is this right?

[Glitterknickaz]

A friend of mine sent a beautifully made home made birthday cake into nursery with her four year old to celebrate his birthday.
On arrival she was told that they could not serve home made cakes to the children at nursery. My friend then had to purchase a cake from a nearby shop for nursery to use.
Does anyone know of any specific legislation that states that home made produce cannot be given to the children in nurseries?
In particular the South West region of England.

We've been unable to find anything specific saying that home made produce should not be given to children at nurseries, does anyone know whether there actually is legislation for this or is it just an urban myth which has become adopted as the norm?

Yeah, well, some nurseries are more law-abiding than others, as we all know. And I suppose if your preschool doesn't serve meals, it won't have a food permit and therefore won't be inspected by Environmental Health. I'm sure if it was, the people who run it would be a bit more careful.

preschool serve snacks though - would they not need one for that.

I don't think you need a food permit to serve snacks. It seems unlikely that a mother and toddler group would have one, for example. Which makes you think. If a kid got food poisoning after eating a home-made cake served by a preschool or mother and toddler group without a food permit, would Environmental Health come after them for not having one?

I bet they would.

well at our preschool they make cakes and eat them.

My ds has a severe egg allergy but can tolerate well cooked egg in sponge cakes (so far). However, was that another parent had brought in fairy cakes made at home and they gave him one!
He was ok but angry they didn't give one to him to bring home so I could monitor him.

But surely if you send in shop-bought cake you don't send in the packaging with it anyway? I think it's about environmental health, not allergies. Anyway, home-made may be healthier but shop-bought is nearly always cheaper (unless you buy posh cakes from Waitrose). Ingredients are incredibly expensive to buy.

And if I had a child with severe allergies there is no way I'd trust a nursery! And anyway you can ban peanuts from nursery but you can't ban the kids from eating them at home, having peanut dust on their hands and touching the child with the allergy. It amazes me that anyone would take the chance if their child is so badly allergic (rather than just suffering from a rash or something).

I suspect it's both environmental health and allergies.

That being said, DS1's school allows (nut-free) home-made cakes. The (parent-run, cooperative) nursery that both DSes went to allwoed home-made cakes - they had to meet whatever the day's allergy rules were, but then we all always had to be au fait with the allergy situation, as we were cooking lunch for all the kids, when it was our turn.

Oh, people do generally bring in shop-bought cakes with packaging. I have used a nursery that had a 'bought cakes only' policy. Why would you take a Tesco cake out of its tidy little box before lugging it to nursery?

not a law, just their rule.

When it was DD's 1st bday, D only goes to nursery for a half day a week (for my sanity ), I asked if I could ring a home made cake in and they said yes. I made one big one and lots of small fairy cakes. Although I suppose they don't have any DC's with allergies then.

Funny, they can serve nursery made cake at home though. surely that is just as likely to be risky to eat?

Our nursery made birthday cakes for the children.