Nursery near Shrewsbury starts disciplinary proceedings after toddlers escape through unlocked gate

Two-year-old Linden Smith and a little friend managed to get out of what his mum Becky said was an insecure gate at Hillside House Nursery and went off down a road in Hook A Gate, near Shrewsbury.

The nursery has apologised 'profusely' and launched disciplinary action against staff after the incident earlier this month.

"He went to cross the road but luckily a member of the public waved down traffic," said mum Becky Worrall. "I was very upset, they could have wandered off into the local woodland and drowned or been run over.

"I was very, very upset and angry but now I feel livid.

"I have taken Linden out of that nursery and have him with a child minder. There is nothing that they can say that would persuade me to take Linden back there. I don't know about the other little boy.

"At first I was told that they had escaped under a gate but the gate was unlocked. There were four members of staff but they did not realise they were missing for more than three minutes."

The incident happened in the morning of Friday, October 14 and the nursery called Becky at 12.15pm to tell her about the incident and invite her to a meeting.

"I think it is absolutely shocking. I don't feel they have dealt properly with it at all. The gate was unlocked, but where were the visual checks?

"Linden is a typical two year old boy," said Becky.

"If that member of the public had not been there, they could have been run over or taken by paedophiles, or gone into woodland. A million different things could have happened to them. I will forever be in the debt and forever grateful that the member of the public was walking her dog."

Becky, a mum of three and a partner to fellow retail worker Shaun Smith, said her motivation now is to raise awareness of what has happened.

A spokesperson for Hillside House Nursery said: “Our team is devastated that something like this could happen and we have apologised profusely to the families concerned.

"We take great care to safeguard our children and have launched an investigation to understand exactly what happened. The faulty padlock has been replaced and additional security measures have been implemented to ensure that no child is able to leave our premises by themselves.

“We have begun disciplinary proceedings, have retrained the team in safeguarding practices and reissued our policies and procedures, along with introducing additional garden checks, to ensure this never happens again.

"We have informed the local authority as well as Ofsted who have undertaken a compliance call and will publish a summary of their findings.

“We would like to reassure parents that we will do everything in our power to keep their children safe at all times and are grateful to the members of the public who returned the children safely to the nursery.”