A Luton nursery has been rapped by Ofsted after staff failed to make a child protection referral.
Inspectors visited Beech Hill Nursery and Children’s Centre, Dunstable Road, in April after concerns arose over the safeguarding practice at the nursery.
The schools watchdog found that a further child protection referral had not been made to the council after concerns arose for a second time over a child’s safety.
The incident “compromises children’s safety and well-being”, according to the Ofsted report published on Friday.
It added: “This means that, despite other areas of practice being strong, leadership and management is inadequate.
“Safeguarding procedures in the nursery are not sufficiently robust to ensure all staff consistently follow agreed processes for gathering and reporting information.”
Due to the failing Beech Hill Nursery and Children’s Centre was given an overall ‘inadequate’ rating, a drop from its previous ‘good’ report in August 2011.
Despite the incident inspectors found that staff at the nursery “do not ignore concerns and continue to seek the involvement of the relevant agencies to safeguard children.”
Nursery operator Amtiaz Munir told Luton News the child protection referral failure was an ‘isolated incident’.
She added: “We have worked very hard with the local authority to make improvements.
“These were well received by the Ofsted inspector who carried out a monitoring visit last week and we hope to be out of the (inadequate) category later this year.”