There is no single right level of inspection detail in Civic.ly, and councils genuinely choose differently. What often gets missed is that this is two decisions, not one:
- How much does each check record? From a bare pass or fail, up to an itemised checklist with a question per part.
- What is the check attached to? A whole place (a park, a building), or each individual item inside it.
They are independent. You can run the lightest possible check on a whole park, or the most detailed checklist on a single swing, or anything in between. Treating them as one ladder is what makes the choice feel harder than it is.
Both questions come down to the same trade-off: speed against the strength of your evidence if something goes wrong.
Decision 1: how much does the check record?
Status only, no checklist
The person marks the task passed or failed, and nothing else. If they fail it, they raise a defect for the thing that was wrong.
This is a legitimate method, not a corner cut. It is sometimes called negative reporting: everything is assumed fine unless a fault is recorded. Plenty of small councils with a diligent, long-serving team run exactly this way, and it produces a clean dated record that the check happened.
To use it, leave the checklist unselected when you create the inspection. See How to Create an Inspection.
What you give up: no record of what was looked at. You can show a park was checked on Tuesday, not that the slide specifically was.
The Simple Checklist
Four broad questions available on every asset: safe, works, clean, condition.
Because every asset answers the same four questions, you can compare and report across your whole estate. It is the easiest level to train, and a sensible default when you want some evidence without a different form for every asset type.
A Check
Quick and graded: a handful of broad questions specific to the asset type, each answered with a condition rating. A Swing Check, a Defib Check, a Fire Extinguisher Check.
More meaningful than the Simple Checklist because the questions are the right ones for that asset, and still fast enough for a round.
A Sweep
Thorough and itemised: one question per part, answered OK / N/A / fault. A Park Sweep, a Building Sweep, a Van Sweep.
This is the strongest everyday evidence, because each element is signed off individually and you can see exactly what was found. On both Checks and Sweeps, a failing answer automatically starts a defect, pre-titled and ready to assign.
Browse the checklist library to see what exists for your asset types, and How to Use a Checklist for getting the right one onto a task.
Decision 2: what is the check attached to?
The whole place
Draw the park, cemetery, allotment site or building as an area, and inspect that. One task per visit, however many things are inside it.
Fast, easy to train, and the whole site is covered by one record. The cost is that your evidence is site-level: you can prove the park was inspected, not that a particular piece of equipment was.
Each item
Inspect the individual assets. Usually built as a routine, so one schedule generates a task per item each cycle rather than you creating them one by one.
Slower, and a much longer task list, but it gives you the thing site-level checks cannot: a dated record against that swing, by that person, at that time.
The two decisions combine
Depth and grain are set independently, which is worth seeing plainly:
| Whole place | Each item | |
|---|---|---|
| Status only | Fastest possible regime. Walk the park, pass it, defect anything wrong. | A dated pass per item with no detail. Rare, but valid for large numbers of simple things. |
| Simple Checklist | Four questions for the whole site. | Four comparable questions per item, across the estate. |
| Check or Sweep | Park Sweep, Building Sweep: itemised by group, one task. | Swing Check, Van Sweep: the fullest evidence, the most work. |
A Sweep is not the same thing as a site-level check, which is easy to assume. A Park Sweep covers a whole site; a Van Sweep covers one vehicle in detail. The sweep describes how itemised the questions are, not what the task is attached to.
Where does the defect go?
The same grain question, asked again at the point something is actually wrong, and it is the one most worth getting right.
A defect can be raised against the whole place or against the individual item. Raise it on the item wherever you reasonably can. That is what builds the asset's own history: open the asset later and you see every inspection, defect and job it has ever had. That history is what justifies a repair or a replacement to your council, and it is what you reach for if a claim ever lands.
One behaviour to know: when a site-level sweep fails on a group (benches, say), the defect it starts attaches to the site, not to the individual bench. If you want it on the bench, raise it there yourself afterwards, from the mobile + button, picking the asset near you on the map.
Once a defect exists, the work that fixes it belongs in jobs rather than in the defect itself. See How to Raise and Manage a Defect and Fixing Defects with Jobs.
How to choose
- Check your insurance wording first. This can settle the question for you. Some policies require play and fitness equipment to be inspected weekly, provably, item by item, and will decline a claim otherwise. Where a policy says that, site-level checks alone will not satisfy it, whatever else suits your team.
- Be honest about your team. A small, diligent, long-serving team who know the sites can be trusted with a light check. If you already suspect the round is being completed from the van, per-item sign-off is your friend, precisely because it cannot be done without visiting each item.
- Put the detail where the risk is. Benches and bins rarely justify individual weekly checks. A zip wire, a multi-play unit or a fire alarm panel might. Sizing the effort to the risk is usually a better answer than picking one level for everything.
- You are allowed to mix. Most councils that have thought about it land on a hybrid: a light regular round over the whole site, plus detailed checks on the few high-risk items, plus the annual external inspection. These are just separate recurring inspections. Name them clearly so the team knows which is which.
Whichever you choose, the pattern for problems does not change: when something is wrong, record it on the specific thing that is wrong. That is where the evidence accumulates.
Worked through, asset by asset
This guide is the general shape. Three articles work the same decision through for a particular kind of asset, with the checklists that actually exist for it and the trade-offs that bite there:
- Parks and playgrounds — where insurance terms and claim risk press hardest.
- Buildings — where the same choice meets statutory and multi-year checks.
- Vehicles and machinery — the same ladder framed as three tiers, from a daily swipe-pass through to a per-item sweep.
Common Questions
Yes, as a method. It is a recognised way of working and it produces a genuine dated record. Whether it is acceptable for you depends on your insurance terms and how much you would want to prove if there were an incident. Read those two things and decide deliberately, rather than defaulting.
No, and almost nobody does. The annual external inspection (RoSPA or similar) is a specialist survey of every nut and bolt. Your weekly round is an operational check that nothing has broken, been vandalised or become unsafe since last week. They are different jobs. When the annual report arrives, its findings become defects and jobs against the specific assets.
Yes, and it is a good way in. Start everyone on the simplest level to build the habit, then move the high-risk items to per-item checks once the team is comfortable. Changing level means creating a different recurring inspection, not redoing any history.
Yes. Even with site-level inspections, defects and jobs are raised against individual assets, so they need to exist. The register is also what your asset valuations and replacement planning run off.