The rota is a plan, the ratio is a measurement

A roster proves intent: who's meant to be where, from when to when, with what breaks and what cover. It doesn't prove compliance, because a roster can't see someone who tapped out for a break ten minutes ago, or a room that's short a body because relief cover hasn't actually arrived yet. Ratio compliance has to be measured against who's actually present, reconciled against the child register, not read off a plan.

Breaks are the sharpest version of this gap. A staff member on a break is not available to supervise during it, full stop — the service needs genuine cover during that window, and a record of the arrangement, not an assumption that the ratio still technically holds because the person's shift hasn't ended.

The regulation's actual evidence requirements are specific: daily start, finish, and break times for staff, including break cover, and arrival/departure times for children — and the two need to reconcile with each other, especially at the moments where the nominal roster is most likely to drift from reality: opening, closing, meals, nappy changes, sleep, outdoor play, and room transitions.

This is the problem Bloomffy's ratio engine was built to close, not by enforcing anything, but by measuring the right thing. Staff tap themselves into and out of a room as they physically enter and leave it — "checked out" means on a break, not off the clock — and the required ratio recalculates on every tap, driven by the youngest child present in that room, not an average across ages. When a tap-out drops a room below its required ratio, the system doesn't block the tap; it opens a timed, tracked event and waits for resolution, which gets logged either way — automatically if relief arrives inside the window, manually with a note if it doesn't.

The reason that matters more than it sounds: a rota that always looks compliant on paper is not evidence of anything, because it was never measuring the thing an inspector actually cares about. A timestamped record of a real shortfall being detected and resolved is.