One child in every fourteen in the UK has a food allergy. In a room of thirty nursery children, that's statistically two. Allergen management isn't a niche compliance requirement — it's a daily operational reality for every setting that serves food. And from November 2025, Ofsted's new inspection framework introduced a separate safeguarding judgment: "met" or "not met." There's no nuance in that scale. Allergen failures don't cost you a grade. They cost you the whole safeguarding judgment. This guide covers exactly what Ofsted looks for, what the EYFS requires, and where most settings fall short.
What the EYFS Actually Requires on Allergens
The requirements aren't complicated. The gap is between knowing them and operationalising them.
Before a child attends for the first time: Dietary requirements — including every allergy and intolerance — must be collected and recorded before the child's first session. Not on arrival. Not during settling-in week. Before. This requirement was in the EYFS framework before September 2025 and was strengthened by it. If your intake process collects this information on day one, it's out of compliance.
That information must reach the kitchen. The EYFS requires that dietary and allergen information is shared with all staff involved in preparing and handling food. Not stored in an intake file. Actively shared. If the person serving food at lunch on Tuesday doesn't know that the child in the green chair has a sesame allergy, the information collection at registration achieved nothing.
At every mealtime: A specific, named member of staff must be responsible for checking that the food served to each child meets their dietary requirements. Not "a member of staff." A named person. A specific check. Every meal. Every snack.
Allergy action plans, from September 2025: The updated EYFS now requires settings to develop individual allergy action plans, review them regularly, and share them with all staff. If you have a child with a known allergy and no written action plan in place, that's a gap Ofsted will find.
Ongoing communication: Children can develop allergies at any time. An intake form from six months ago isn't sufficient. The framework requires ongoing conversations with parents and carers, not a one-time data capture.
The 14 Allergens: Know Them, Label Them
Under the Food Information for Consumers Regulation, nurseries are required to provide allergen information for all food containing any of the 14 major allergens. Your staff need to know this list. Not roughly know it — know it.
| Allergen | Worth noting |
|---|---|
| Celery | Includes celeriac, celery seeds, celery salt |
| Cereals containing gluten | Wheat, rye, barley, oats — check every grain |
| Crustaceans | Prawns, crabs, lobster, crayfish |
| Eggs | Including eggs used in coatings and baking |
| Fish | Including fish sauces and stocks |
| Lupin | Lupin flour and seeds — increasingly used in gluten-free products |
| Milk | Including lactose and milk solids in processed foods |
| Molluscs | Mussels, oysters, squid, snails |
| Mustard | Including mustard powder and mustard oil |
| Nuts (tree nuts) | Almonds, cashews, walnuts, pecans — each a separate allergen in law |
| Peanuts | Separate from tree nuts in legislation |
| Sesame | Including tahini and sesame oil |
| Soya | Common in processed foods — check labels |
| Sulphur dioxide / sulphites | Found in dried fruit, wine, some sauces |
Lupin is the one that catches settings out. It's used in some gluten-free flours and bread mixes. If you're catering for a child with a wheat allergy using gluten-free alternatives, check that the alternative doesn't contain lupin.
For pre-packed food — including snacks, milk cartons and crackers — the allergens must be emphasised on the packaging. Staff should be checking these labels routinely, not once at the start of term. Manufacturers change formulations. A product that was safe in September may not be safe in January.
What Ofsted Is Actually Looking At
Inspectors aren't reading your allergen policy. They're watching what happens at lunchtime.
Under the November 2025 inspection framework, safeguarding now receives a separate "met" or "not met" judgment. Allergen management sits squarely in the safeguarding category. A failed allergen system doesn't pull down your overall grade — it fails safeguarding entirely, regardless of how strong everything else is.
In practice, an Ofsted inspector assessing allergen management will want to see:
A live system, not a static document. A laminated matrix on the wall is evidence you once knew your allergens. What inspectors want to see is staff actively checking, at service, which child needs which meal. A binder isn't a system. Behaviour at the serving hatch is a system.
Staff who can answer on the spot. "Who has dietary requirements in this room today?" should not require anyone to leave the room to find out. The member of staff responsible for allergen checks at each mealtime should be able to name the children and their requirements without consulting a document. The document backs up the knowledge; it isn't a substitute for it.
The link between intake records and kitchen practice. Inspectors will trace the journey of allergen information from parent disclosure to plate. If that chain has a gap — if a child's allergy is on file but didn't reach the cook that day — that gap is the finding.
Allergy action plans, reviewed and shared. Post-September 2025, these are required for every child with a known allergy. Inspectors will ask whether staff have read them. Having plans that staff haven't seen is not substantially better than not having plans.
Cross-Contamination: The Risks Beyond the Kitchen
This is the section most allergen policies miss.
The kitchen is obvious. Separate boards, separate utensils, clean surfaces, labelled containers. Most settings have these in place. What fewer settings have addressed is the cross-contamination risk that exists outside the kitchen.
Homemade playdough. Standard playdough recipes contain wheat flour. A child with a wheat or gluten allergy who handles playdough is at risk of ingesting allergen through hand-to-mouth contact — which, in under-fives, is essentially continuous. If you make playdough in-house and have children with gluten allergies, either use a wheat-free recipe for the whole setting or exclude the child from the activity with a suitable alternative.
Junk modelling. Packaging brought in from home can carry trace allergens from previous contents. A milk carton, a crisp packet, a biscuit box — all potential cross-contamination vectors. Settings that run regular junk modelling activities without an allergen lens on the materials are carrying a risk they probably haven't thought about.
Shared snack tables. If children serve themselves from communal bowls or plates, traces of allergens transfer between children. A child without a nut allergy picks up a peanut butter cracker, puts it back, and the next child with a peanut allergy picks it up. It sounds unlikely until it happens.
Celebration food. Birthday cakes brought in by parents are the single most common source of ad hoc allergen incidents in nursery settings. Your food policy should require parents to bring packaged food with a full ingredients list. "Homemade" means unknown ingredients. The nicest homemade birthday cake in the world is a liability if you can't verify what's in it.
Building a System That Actually Works
The allergen matrix is necessary but not sufficient. Here's what a functioning allergen management system looks like in practice.
Registration → kitchen, not registration → file. When allergen information is collected at intake, the next step is a meeting with whoever manages food provision — whether that's the kitchen lead, the catering supplier, or the manager. Information collected and filed is inert. Information collected and briefed is protective.
Individual allergy action plans, per child. Since September 2025 these are required. Each plan should cover: the specific allergen(s), the severity of previous reactions, symptoms to look for, medication held on site, and the steps staff should take in an emergency. The plan should be signed off by a parent or carer and reviewed at least once a term.
Daily allergen check built into mealtime routine. The designated person responsible for allergen checks at each meal should be named on the rota — not assumed to be whoever is present. That check should happen before food is plated, not after a child has started eating.
External caterer protocols, specifically. If you use a catering supplier, their allergen information needs to reach your designated person before each service — not monthly, not weekly, at each service. A supplier who provides allergen information in a document updated periodically is not providing a live system. This is a conversation worth having with your supplier in writing, so their commitment is documented.
Ingredient label checking as standing practice. Assign this as a regular task, not a one-off. Product reformulations happen without notice. The FSA runs an allergen alert service — sign up and share alerts with your food-handling staff when relevant ones come through.
The Compliance Checklist
| Area | Requirement | In place? |
|---|---|---|
| Intake | Allergen info collected before first session, not on day one | ☐ |
| Intake | Individual allergy action plans completed for all known allergies | ☐ |
| Intake | Plans signed by parent/carer and reviewed each term | ☐ |
| Staff | All food-handling staff hold Level 2 Food Hygiene minimum | ☐ |
| Staff | All staff know the 14 allergens and symptoms of allergic reaction | ☐ |
| Staff | Designated allergen-check person named on rota for each mealtime | ☐ |
| Mealtime | Allergen check completed before food is served, per child | ☐ |
| Mealtime | PFA-trained staff member present throughout every meal | ☐ |
| Kitchen | Separate utensils, boards and storage for allergen-free meals | ☐ |
| Kitchen | Ingredient labels checked routinely, not just at product introduction | ☐ |
| External | Supplier provides allergen info per menu item, per service | ☐ |
| Wider setting | Playdough, junk modelling and shared snack risks assessed | ☐ |
| Celebration | Policy requires packaged food with ingredient lists for birthday items | ☐ |
| Emergency | Prescribed medication (including EpiPens) stored accessibly and in date | ☐ |
Finding Suppliers With the Right Allergen Infrastructure
If you're using an external catering supplier, their allergen system is part of your allergen system. The two aren't separate.
What you're looking for: a supplier who provides allergen information per meal item, updated at every service, accessible to the named member of staff carrying out checks. Digital systems that flag allergens at the point of ordering — like apetito's portal, which highlights allergens on both the ordering screen and the meal packaging — represent the operational standard worth benchmarking against.
Not every supplier in the sector has this infrastructure. Some still operate on a static document basis. That's a contractual and safeguarding risk worth addressing before your next inspection.
The Nurture Kitchen website lists nursery catering suppliers by region, including verified suppliers who have been assessed for EYFS alignment and allergen management standards.
Browse nursery catering suppliers at Nurture Kitchen — filter by region to find verified options near you.
The Bottom Line
Allergen management is the area of nursery food compliance where the consequences of failure are most severe. Not just for Ofsted — for the children in your care.
From November 2025, Ofsted's new inspection framework grades safeguarding separately. A "not met" safeguarding judgment is not a grey area. Build a system that works in practice, not just on paper: intake before attendance, action plans in place, named people responsible, checks at service, and external caterer protocols documented.
The policy is the starting point. What happens at the serving hatch is what matters.
Find verified allergen-ready suppliers
Every supplier listed on Nurture Kitchen has been assessed for EYFS alignment and allergen documentation standards. Filter by region to find verified options near you.
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