A NURSERY has been ordered to close by Ofsted due to fears children are "at risk of harm."

Rainbow Day Nursery in Kingland Road, Poole has until December 9 to make changes to safeguarding procedures under a temporary suspension notice issued by the regulatory body.

But Ofsted has warned: "The provider may not provide childcare for which registration is required while the suspension is in place and may commit an offence if they do so."

And it adds: "We suspended the provider's registration because we believe children may be at risk of harm. Suspension allows time for the provider to take steps to reduce or eliminate the risk of harm to children."

In a compliance action report Ofsted said the provider told them on October 14 that another agency had required them to take action due to safeguarding.

Ofsted visited on October 23 and served a welfare requirements notice after concluding the nursery was not meeting its requirements.

The notice demanded that action be taken by November 9 but when inspectors returned on November 10 they were still so concerned that they decide to suspend the nursery.

Ofsted had also received another report of concerns between the two visits.

In a summary report, Ofsted said: "We found the provider had not been meeting the requirements in relation to Information for Parents, which was included in the concern we had received, but had taken action to put this right. The provider had improved the arrangements for sharing information with parents if a child was identified as having an injury that did not occur within the setting.

"However, we found the provider had not met all of the actions included in the welfare requirement notice following our visit on October 23 2020."

Ofsted said although staff had completed training "there are still concerns around their understanding of their individual roles and responsibilities in relation to safeguarding.

"Leaders and managers continued to lack a good enough understanding of how to identify and respond to all concerns. They had failed to take sufficient steps to address the other actions included in the notice. We also found that leaders had failed to provide effective leadership and management to staff, which has contributed to the breaches in requirements."

The last full inspection of the nursery was carried out by Ofsted in November 2016 when it was rated as Good.

At the time it had 111 children up to the age of four on roll and 65 places. It operates from two converted houses near Poole town centre.

The Daily Echo has attempted to contact the nursery for comment but has been unable to do so.