A weekly newspaper was justified in reporting three children as “missing” from a nursery, the press watchdog has ruled.

The Independent Press Standards Organisation has found in favour of the Helensburgh Advertiser after reported “three missing child incidents have been recorded in the last 12 months” at a nursery owned by David and Roanna Wood.

The Woods had claimed the story was inaccurate, claiming two of the incidents involved children who had gone off-site but whose locaction was always known.

But IPSO ruled that use of the term “missing”, particularly in relation to children, covered a range of scenarios of differing severity.

Complaining under Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice, the Woods did not dispute one previously reported incident relating to the school, but claimed the two additional incidents raised in the story did not involve children going “missing”.

They said one incident involved a child exiting the nursery garden to see their parent during morning drop-off, while another had left “unnoticed” while a parent was speaking with a staff member.

Staff had been looking for the child for less than a minute when the child in question was found in the foyer area.

In response, the Advertiser said it had received allegations from numerous sources about the incident and had contacted the Care Inspectorate, which confirmed it had been notified by the care provider of two incidents.

Prior to publication, it sent an email to the centre with allegations made by members of the public as well as confirmation that the Care Inspectorate had “been notified of two incidents and the nursery and family centre, as well as the most recent incident at the forest school”.

The Advertiser asserted that the Care Inspectorate had not disputed that the children were missing when asked directly and, as such, it had no reason to believe “missing children” was an inaccurate characterisation.

IPSO wished to make clear that it was not taking a view on the nature of the incidents themselves and it recognised that the use of the term “missing”, particularly in relation to children, could be suggestive of a range of scenarios of differing severity.

However, it was not in dispute that in both incidents young children had, however briefly, been able to leave the nursery building when they should not have been able to do so.

The Committee found it was therefore not significantly inaccurate for the publication to characterise these as incidents of “missing children”.

The complaint was not upheld, and the full adjudication can be read here.