Playground safety inspection (AS 4685)

When you need this form

Routine operational inspections keep public playgrounds defensible. Councils, schools, parks and body corporates run them on a set cycle, checking equipment, surfacing, entrapment gaps, fixings and general hazards. Public liability lives outdoors, and a claim after a fall turns on whether the site was inspected, what was found, and how quickly the hazard was closed out.

Insurers and lawyers read inspection records line by line. A photo of the worn swing shackle, dated and pinned to the playground, is worth more than a tick in a column. Live inspections also stop the cycle drifting: the record shows the interval was kept, and shows the defect went somewhere after it was found.

What good looks like

• Every item of equipment inspected individually, not the playground as one.
• Surfacing checked for depth, coverage and contamination under each fall zone.
• Entrapment, protrusion and pinch points checked at head, neck and finger sizes.
• Defects rated by severity, with the closure or isolation action recorded.
• Photos of each defect plus inspector name, date and site pin.