Free risk assessment and daily checks templates for the Early Years

February 28, 2025

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In a hurry? Here’s the quick run-down:

Effective risk assessment can keep children and educators safe in your setting, by preventing accidents and incidents and finding problems before they can escalate.
Reasonable risk management is a requirement of the EYFS, but it is up to providers to decide how they will document this process.
At this link, you can download our risk assessment template and our daily risk assessment checklist.

What the EYFS states about risk assessment

Providers must ensure that they take all reasonable steps to ensure staff and children in their care are not exposed to risks and must be able to demonstrate how they are managing risks
Providers must determine where it is helpful to make some written risk assessments in relation to specific issues, to inform staff practice, and to demonstrate how they are managing risks if asked by parents and/or carers or inspectors.
Risk assessments should identify aspects of the environment that need to be checked on a regular basis, when and by whom those aspects will be checked, and how the risk will be removed or minimised.

Research the risks in your early years setting

The specific risks in your Early Years setting will be unique to your environment. Below are just some examples of how you might begin to compile your risk assessment.

An example of a risk assessment for an Early Years setting

The big ideas

Create your own daily risk assessment checklist

Once you have identified your risks, you can begin to create your daily checklists. Again, these will be unique to your setting, so we’ve created these examples based on the list above.