Review Guidelines

Childcare.co.uk have over 60,000 reviews of childcare providers, tutors and schools, written by other parents just like you.

These guidelines are designed to help you write the best review you can in order to help other parents make the best decisions regarding their childcare or tutoring needs.

Fair, Balanced and Genuine

All reviews must be fair, balanced and based on genuine experiences. We take false and malicious reviews seriously and try to ensure that reviews published on our platform are genuine.

First-hand, Detailed and Helpful

Finding the right childcare provider or tutor can be one of the most difficult decisions for parents to make. The more information a reviewer can add that is relevant, first-hand and helpful, the better. We recommend at least 2-3 sentences to make a review really worthwhile to other parents.

If you like or dislike something then please go into as much detail as you can as to why you hold those opinions or beliefs. 

Reviews must be detailed enough to be helpful to parents. Short reviews such as "I was disappointed with this childcare provider." or "I did not like this childcare provider. Contact me and I will tell you why." are not helpful and will be removed.

Be Mindful of your Personal Information

Childcare.co.uk reviews will be published on the internet and displayed through our mobile apps, so it's best to generalise parts of your review in order to keep any personal information safe. 

• Use DD (Darling Daughter) or DS (Darling Son) instead of your children's names.
• Try and keep to first/given names. Childcare.co.uk reserve the right to remove last names
• Don't mention specific times and location names

Good: My DD loves it when Maria picks her up from school!

Bad: My daughter, Jane Smith, loves it when Maria picks her up at Westgate Primary School every Wednesday at 3:30pm.

Opinions and Facts

We know how passionate we can get, particularly when it comes to our children, but the best reviews are ones where the passion and opinions are genuinely held and backed up by evidence and facts. If you write a review for a provider that they can prove to be incorrect, we reserve the right to remove the review permanently.

Good: I was dissapointed to find out from our school that Maria was late picking up our DS on three occasions and this was not brought to our attention.

Bad: Never shows up on time

Keep it Relevant

Childcare.co.uk and all of the parents out there looking for childcare or tutors, care about the quality of service they can expect to receive. This means that others are less interested in opinions and/or facts that are not so relevant to the service, particularly if it's a negative opinion. Any irrelevant review content may be removed.

Good: The outside play area is wonderful and our DS loves it when they get to play outside. 

Bad: I don't like the colour of the bike shed.

Family Friendly

Please keep all reviews family friendly. Do not use expletives or inappropriate and aggressive language. Reviews that are deemed unsuitable will be rejected.

Disputed Reviews

In cases where there is a dispute of facts between a parent and service provider, we must take a neutral stance. We are not a court of law and thus unable to determine factual statements from nonfactual.

In the event that a service provider disputes a review, we reserve the right to review communication sent and received within our member-to-member messaging system.

We are generally unable to review any documents, materials or other purported evidence held outside of our platform. This is because we cannot guarantee the authenticity of external materials and due to legal and data protection reasons.

Reviews may be entirely or partly removed if there is information or material held within our platform to suggest that claims made are not factually correct.

We strongly encourage service providers to respond to reviews and we publish responses alongside the review. This enables service providers to put forward their own version of events, if the claims made in the review are disputed.

The best way of resolving disputes between members is by both sides opening up a direct dialogue with each other. We will remove reviews at the request of the reviewer.

Review Terms & Conditions

• We are required by UK law to publish all genuine, relevant and lawful customer reviews.

• All reviews must comply with these guidelines and the full Childcare.co.uk Terms and Conditions.

• Childcare.co.uk reserves the right to reject, edit or remove a review, at our sole discretion, if a review fails to comply with these guidelines or if it is deemed to be not genuine, relevant or lawful.

• Reviews will only be accepted from parent members who have had a recent customer experience with a service provider - generally around 3 months. Reviews based on customer experiences from many months or years prior to the review date may be deemed to be not relevant.

• A customer experience may include the usage of services provided by a service provider or communication with a provider, such as an enquiry/conversation about using services, even if this results in services never being provided.

• We have security monitoring features in place designed to help detect false reviews. We may request that reviewers provide supporting documents to verify their identity and their customer experience of a provider. If a service provider, a member of their family, or any known associate is found to have falsely left a review, we reserve the right to permanently suspend accounts and take all necessary and appropriate legal action. 

• Reviews containing allegations of criminal offences will not be published and must be reported to the Police and relevant authorities.

Report any Concerns

It's really important that if you have any concerns about anyone using our platform that you report them to us as quickly as possible.

In England you can report any concerns about an Ofsted registered childcare provider or school to Ofsted or by calling 0300 123 1231.

In Wales you can report any concerns about a registered childcare provider to Care Inspectorate Wales or by calling 0300 7900 126.

In Scotland you can report any concerns about a registered childcare provider to the Care Inspectorate or by calling 0345 600 9527.

If you have any immediate concerns about your safety or the safety of a child or another person then you should call the Police using the emergency services number 999.