The Education Regulations (Early Childhood Services) and the Ministry of Education's licensing criteria are set to ensure that every service at least meets a minimum level of staffing, safety, health, curriculum, (etc) and that services operate satisfactorily. 

When this is not the case, and a service is caught breaching one or more licensing requirements, the consequence can be a downgrade in licence, a licence suspension, or licence cancellation.

The lists below are not inclusive of all services that breached licensing requirements for two reasons.

1. The Ministry of Education which is the regulatory body, does not do annual licensing checks of services.  Problems tend to only come to its attention as a result of complaints about a service from the public or from what the Education Review Office might pick up during its pre-announced visits to services every 3 or 4 years.
2. The ministry can exercise discretion in whether to formally put a service on notice. It may for example, take into consideration the number of breaches, how a licence reclassification will affect the commercial position of a service, and whether the cost to it of the service provider bringing in a lawyer would outweigh the benefits (even on finding a major safety issue such as an area being used for children’s sleep and play that does not have NZ Fire Service approval). 

A provisional licence is issued for a fixed period of time during which the service is expected to become compliant in order to return to its full licence status.  For information on the reasons for licence suspension and cancellation click here.