Travelling with children

Consent is criminal law, not a formality

This is the part most accounts of family travel leave out entirely. Under the Child Abduction Act 1984, a person connected with a child under 16 commits an offence by taking or sending the child out of the United Kingdom without the appropriate consent. On summary conviction that carries up to six months and a fine; on indictment, up to seven years. No prosecution may be brought except by or with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

A connected person means a parent; the father of an unmarried couple who has reasonable grounds to believe he is the father; a guardian; a special guardian; a person named in a child arrangements order as someone with whom the child is to live; or a person with custody.

Appropriate consent means the consent of each of the mother, the father if he has parental responsibility, any guardian, any special guardian, anyone named in a child arrangements order as a person the child is to live with, and anyone with custody — or, failing that, the leave of the court.

There is an exception, and the official summary of it does not match the statute. A person named in a child arrangements order as someone the child lives with may take the child abroad for a period of less than one month; a special guardian, for a period of less than three months. Both the 1984 Act and the equivalent provision of the Children Act 1989 use that wording. Government guidance renders it as 28 days — which is not the same thing, because a month beginning on 1 July runs to 31 July. The exception falls away altogether where the trip would breach a court order.

The defences are narrower than they look. Belief that consent had been given, belief that it would have been given, having taken all reasonable steps to communicate, and unreasonable refusal are all available — but the unreasonable-refusal defence is removed where the person refusing holds a child arrangements order saying the child lives with them, is a special guardian or has custody, or where the taking would breach a United Kingdom court order. Once the issue is raised, the burden is on the prosecution.

Scotland and Northern Ireland are differently drawn

The Act does not apply uniformly, and the Scottish position is structurally different in a way that matters. The Scottish offence requires a court order to exist: it applies where a United Kingdom court has made an order awarding custody or naming a person the child is to live with, or where an English, Welsh or Northern Irish wardship order is in force, or where a court has prohibited removal from the United Kingdom or part of it. Being a parent or guardian is not enough on its own. So in Scotland, absent any such order, removing a child without the other parent's consent is not an offence under this Act — though it may still found civil proceedings.

Northern Ireland has its own order of 1985, which mirrors England and Wales but whose drafting was never updated to the language of child arrangements orders: it still speaks of a person in whose favour a residence order is in force. That person has the same allowance of less than one month, disapplied where the trip breaches an order under the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995. There is no special guardian limb.

Where consent is refused

Where a child arrangements order of the relevant kind is in force, no person may remove the child from the United Kingdom without the written consent of every person who has parental responsibility or the leave of the court, and the court may grant that leave either generally or for specified purposes.

An application to court is the route where consent is withheld. Official guidance indicates what such an application should set out: the departure date, the return date and the method of travel, contact details for the parental-responsibility holders remaining in the United Kingdom, and, for longer trips, the arrangements for the child's education. Where no child arrangements order exists, the vehicles are a specific issue order or a prohibited steps order under the Children Act 1989.

A passport needs one parent; the trip needs all of them

These two rules point in opposite directions, and the gap between them is the single most useful thing to understand here.

His Majesty's Passport Office requires written, wet-signed consent from a person with parental responsibility or legal guardianship for a child aged 0 to 15. Consent from everyone with parental responsibility is required only in defined cases: where a court order says so, on a change of name for an under-16, on a change of name for a 16- or 17-year-old under a court order, and on a change of gender marker for an under-18. Where a parent cannot obtain the other parent's consent and there are no safeguarding concerns and no change of name or gender, examiners are instructed not to ask for a court order or for the other person's consent; the case is referred internally instead.

So a passport can lawfully be issued on one parent's signature, while the journey it is used for may need the agreement of several people. Holding the document proves nothing about permission to travel.

The route for a parent who objects is a caveat, which may be requested by a parent or by another interested party such as the police. Where one is in place the application goes to the counter-fraud team, which liaises with child protection and safeguarding, and a passport will not be issued automatically. A caveat lasts twelve months and is then reviewed with the person who asked for it. The Passport Office cannot compel the surrender of a passport that has already been issued; that requires a court order under the Family Law Act 1986. Parents are not asked for consent at all where they have been violent or abusive, are subject to a restraining or prohibited steps order restricting contact, or are in prison.

Children's passports

A child's passport is valid for five years, against ten for an adult. The application is made while the child is under 16; a child over 16, or within three weeks of turning 16, who has held a British child passport uses the adult renewal route, and one who has never held a British passport applies for a first adult passport. Someone with parental responsibility must make the application, and both parents' details must be given or their absence explained.

Children have needed a passport of their own since 5 October 1998. Up to 4 October 1998 a child could be included on a parent's passport, and a passport already containing a child remained usable until it expired; every such passport is now long out of date. Older accounts that describe adding a child to a parent's document are describing an arrangement that ended more than a quarter of a century ago.

On timing, the published service standard is that a passport usually arrives within three weeks, processing begins when the documents are received, and travel should not be booked until a valid passport is in hand. A renewed passport carries a new number. No official guidance gives a recommended lead time for renewing a child's passport before it expires, so none is stated here.

The Schengen passport rules apply to children identically

Two tests govern entry to the Schengen area, and the governing article draws no distinction by age at all: the document must have been issued within the previous ten years, and its validity must extend at least three months beyond the intended date of departure.

Because a child passport runs for five years, it can never be more than five years old at arrival, so the ten-year limb can never be breached by a document issued as a child passport. The accurate formulation is that the rule applies and is always satisfied in practice — not that it does not apply. The three-month limb applies identically to children, and it is the one that catches families.

Two groups do face the ten-year test in earnest. A 16- or 17-year-old moves to a ten-year adult passport and is in exactly the adult position. And any adult who renewed before 1 October 2018 may hold a passport carrying up to nine months of extra validity transferred from the previous one, which can show an issue date more than ten years before the date of arrival even though the expiry date is still in the future.

Consent letters: often demanded, seldom required by law

The European Union's own position is that there are no European rules on parental authorisation: each country decides for itself, a transit country may ask even where the destination does not, and — in the Union's own words — airlines "often require authorisations and have their own forms". That last point is worth noting as an official characterisation of carrier behaviour rather than an anecdote.

Some states do impose a legal requirement, and three are worth naming because they are drawn differently from one another:

• South Africa requires, where a child under 18 travels with one parent, a parental consent letter together with a copy of the birth certificate, a copy of the absent parent's passport or identity document, and that parent's contact details. The consent affidavit must not be more than six months old when presented. Where the child travels with someone who is not a parent, consent letters from the parents or legal guardians are required. A school principal's affidavit may stand in place of individual affidavits for a school tour.
• Spain requires written permission, signed by the father, mother or guardian, for a Spanish minor resident in Spain leaving the country without a parent or guardian, and states that a child without valid permission cannot travel. It expressly does not apply this to non-national children, except where another state's own law requires it.
• France requires, for a French minor travelling abroad without a parent, identity documentation plus an authorisation to leave the territory on a prescribed form, with a copy of the signing parent's identity document. The official guidance adds that no other document may be demanded — so a family record book cannot be required at the border even where surnames differ.

The United Kingdom, by contrast, imposes no exit requirement on a parent travelling alone with a child. Official guidance amounts to this: a letter from the person with parental responsibility is usually enough, giving that person's contact details and the details of the trip; evidence of the relationship, such as a birth or adoption certificate, is worth carrying; and where a single parent's surname differs from the child's, a divorce or marriage certificate may help. Grandparents and other adults without parental responsibility are not addressed at all, and age thresholds in the destination state are left to that state's embassy.

One honest gap: no British or European official source prescribes what a consent letter should contain beyond that one-line formula. South Africa's affidavit is the nearest thing to a prescribed instrument anywhere, and even there the only stated formality is the six-month limit.

Term-time absence in England, and the regime that changed in 2024

Regulations in force from 19 August 2024 replaced the previous penalty amounts for unauthorised absence in England. The structure is a discount for prompt payment rather than two tiers of seriousness: £80 where the amount is paid within 21 days of the notice being received, and £160 where it is not. Where a penalty notice has already been issued to that parent in respect of that child in the preceding three years, the amount is £160 with no discount available. A third notice cannot be issued to the same parent at all where two have been issued within the preceding three years; prosecution is the alternative.

Two details are commonly got wrong. The window in the regulations is 21 days, not 28 — the 28-day figure that circulates is the payment deadline attaching to the £160 amount. And penalties are issued per parent, per child, so a two-parent family travelling with two children faces four notices rather than one.

A second set of regulations made the same day corrected defects in the first: a withdrawn notice, or one relating to an offence of which the parent was acquitted, does not count towards escalation, and an offence committed before 19 August 2024 is disregarded for escalation purposes even if the notice was issued afterwards.

Departmental guidance sets the threshold at ten sessions of unauthorised absence, in any combination, over a rolling period of ten school weeks, and frames the regime as support first rather than enforcement first, with the local authority's judgement on whether support has been sufficient treated as final. That threshold is stated in guidance rather than in the regulations, and it could not be confirmed against a departmental file directly, so it is reported here as guidance rather than as law.

Beyond penalty notices sits prosecution. The basic offence carries a fine of up to £1,000; the aggravated offence, where the parent knew the child was not attending, carries up to £2,500 and a community order or up to three months' imprisonment. Where prosecution follows because the penalty notice limit has been reached, the authority cannot raise the earlier out-of-court disposals before a finding of guilt, and should prosecute only for the third or subsequent offence. Prosecution is described throughout as a last resort.

As to whether a school can simply authorise a holiday: leave may only be granted by a person the school's proprietor has authorised to grant it, on a request made in advance, and only where that person decides leave should be given because of the exceptional circumstances of the request. No maximum length is prescribed. But departmental guidance states that a need or desire for a holiday, or for absence for leisure and recreation, is not an exceptional circumstance — while also warning schools against blanket policies that refuse automatically.

What the 2017 Supreme Court decision actually held

The case is usually reported as a parent losing a holiday argument. The holding is narrower and more interesting than that, and it made the offence stricter and more certain rather than looser.

The question was what "regularly" means in the attendance offence. The court, unanimously, held that it means attendance in accordance with the rules prescribed by the school. Of the three available readings, "at regular intervals" was rejected as impossible in a school context, since attending every Monday would satisfy it where daily attendance is required. "Sufficiently frequently" was rejected on nine grounds, the principal one being legal certainty: such a test would be far too uncertain to found a criminal offence, because a parent could not know on any given day whether removing the child would be criminal. Two earlier authorities were held not to be followed.

One line from the judgment is the most practically useful thing in this whole subject: leave is not a defence — it is part of the definition of the offence. Authorised absence therefore means no offence has been committed at all, rather than that an offence has been committed and excused.

Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland do not follow England

Wales has not adopted the English amounts. Its regulations, in force since 2 September 2013, set £60 where paid within 28 days and £120 where paid within 42 days. Welsh government policy is that there is no automatic right to withdraw a pupil for a holiday, but that head teachers hold a discretionary power to authorise family holiday leave, judged case by case on the time of year, the length and purpose of the absence, its effect on learning, the timing of examinations, family circumstances and overall attendance — and that, exceptional circumstances aside, no more than ten days' leave should be granted for that purpose. That statement is eleven years old and is reported here as the published position rather than as certainly current.

Scotland has no penalty notice regime at all. Enforcement runs through prosecution, with a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale, or up to one month's imprisonment, or both. Current guidance, published on 18 March 2026, states that family holidays taken in term time should be recorded as unauthorised, and should be authorised only in exceptional circumstances where a parent's employment prevents leave during school holidays — the armed services, the emergency services, or work requiring long absences from home. That is a materially more generous test than England's, where leisure and recreation are expressly ruled out. The Scottish guidance also acknowledges that the categorisation is contentious because holidays cost more in school holiday periods, while noting that government does not control what travel companies charge.

Northern Ireland also has no penalty notice regime. The parental duty and its enforcement sit in an order of 1986, and the published position is that schools are not obliged to agree to a term-time holiday and are entitled to record it as unauthorised; that the Education Welfare Service may apply to the courts, with a fine of up to £1,000 for each child; that prosecutions are a last resort; and that education supervision orders are available. Referral to that service is required where attendance drops below 85 per cent.

Children at the European border

The European Entry/Exit System became fully operational across the Union on 10 April 2026, after a rollout beginning in October 2025, and children are treated differently from adults in exactly one respect.

Under the governing regulation, children under 12 are exempt from the requirement to give fingerprints. They are not exempt from anything else. An individual file is still created, containing the alphanumeric identity and travel-document data and a facial image, which must be taken live; the fingerprint field is simply marked as not applicable. There is no age exemption from the photograph. So the accurate account is that a young child is registered and photographed but not fingerprinted — not that young children are outside the system.

The European travel authorisation is a separate matter and is not in operation: no applications are being collected and no start date has been announced, the Commission having said it will give several months' notice. Reports that the launch has slipped to a particular year are not confirmed by any official document and are not repeated here.

Two points about it are settled and worth knowing in advance. The fee has been set at €20, but the provision waiving it for applicants under 18 — and over 70 — at the time of application was left untouched when the amount was raised, so it survives: every child under 18 will be exempt from the fee. And each child needs an application and an authorisation of their own, with the form electronically signed by a person exercising parental authority or guardianship, whose details must be given. A parent may lodge it; it is still one authorisation per child, valid for three years. Every child needs their own passport in every case.

Air travel: what is regulated, and what only looks it

Two definitions in retained aviation law do more work than anything else here. An infant is a person under the age of two; a child is a person of two or above but under 12. Those are the source of the under-12 figure in seating guidance and of the two-to-eleven band used in the consumer case described below.

The safety rule on lap travel is worth reading precisely, because it is usually described backwards. An operator must restrict multiple occupancy of a seat to specified seats, and the commander must be satisfied that multiple occupancy does not occur other than by one adult and one infant, properly secured by a supplementary loop belt or other restraint device. So the law permits one adult and one infant to share a seat and prescribes how the infant must be secured. It does not require a carrier to offer lap travel, and it does not require a separate seat. Whether lap travel is offered at all, and up to what age, is carrier policy operating within that ceiling.

Child restraint devices brought aboard are acceptable by aircraft type and by operator rather than from any single approved list, and the regulator's advice is to check the particular device with the airline. Free carriage of a pushchair or pram is convention, not law: the accessibility regulation does not mention pushchairs at all, and its free-of-charge duty covers up to two pieces of mobility equipment for disabled passengers and passengers with reduced mobility.

On seating children with an accompanying adult, the regulator's position is guidance and has stayed guidance: airlines should aim to give children under 12 a seat in the same row as the adult accompanying them. A regulator study of 2018 declined to ban paid seat allocation and found that 27 per cent of groups containing a child aged 2 to 16 who had not paid extra were not seated together.

What has changed is where the pressure is applied. On 10 June 2026 the competition authority opened a consumer-protection enforcement case into a carrier over a potentially unfair contract term requiring a consumer travelling with a child to pay a mandatory fee in order to sit next to that child, under the consumer legislation of 2024. Among the questions is whether parents are being charged for the airline to meet obligations it already owes on child safety and disability. The authority notes that unfair terms are not legally binding on customers, and that penalties can reach 10 per cent of global turnover. Nothing is concluded. The case is open, a case update is due in December 2026, and a rolled-up High Court hearing on the legality of the authority's information notices is listed for 24 to 26 November 2026. Widely circulated reports that the fee has been scrapped are not traceable to the authority and are not repeated here. Following action by Italy's civil aviation authority, the fee is not applied on Italian routes.

Unaccompanied minors sit in a double position. The service is unregulated — age bands, chaperoning, paperwork and fees are all carrier policy. The carriage is not: aviation rules list infants and unaccompanied children among special categories of passenger who must be carried under conditions ensuring the safety of the aircraft, must not be seated where they could impede the crew or obstruct an evacuation, and must be notified to the commander in advance.

Disruption is the one place where the law singles children out, and it does so narrowly. The passenger-rights regulation requires operating carriers to give priority in carriage to unaccompanied children, to provide them with care as soon as possible in cases of denied boarding, cancellation and delays of any length, and to pay particular attention to their needs. Every one of those provisions attaches to a child travelling unaccompanied. An accompanied child has no statutory entitlement beyond any other passenger's, and infants are not mentioned in the regulation at all.

Rail

On the national network children under 5 travel free and the child discount runs from 5 to 15 inclusive, at 60 per cent. A child travelling free is not entitled to a seat of their own.

The Family and Friends Railcard is a national scheme rather than any operator's product, and its conditions are more generous than its name suggests. Up to two named adults may hold one card; up to four adults and four children may travel on it together; at least one named adult and one child must travel together; and the named adults need not be related, to each other or to the children. The operative condition is the adult-and-child combination, not the family. An under-5 does not satisfy the child requirement on its own, because a child ticket has to be bought for the discount to apply.

Eurostar's published scheme runs differently. A child under 4 needs no ticket, is not allocated a seat, and travels on an adult's lap, with one such infant per adult; the child must be under 4 on the outbound leg and needs a ticket for the return if they turn 4 in between, and a seat can only be had by booking them as 4 or over. Thereafter: a child fare from 4 to 11, travelling with a responsible person aged 16 or over; a child fare from 12 to 15, normally accompanied but permitted alone on some routes with a signed unaccompanied-minor form; and an adult fare from 16. Pushchairs travel free and in addition to the luggage allowance, but must be folded before boarding.

Interrail does have a published free-child provision. Children under 4 travel free and need no pass, though a free child pass is required to reserve a separate seat for them; children aged 4 to 11 travel free on a child pass, and must be 11 or younger on the first day of the trip. Up to two children may travel with one adult, one person aged 18 or over, or one senior; a third child needs a pass of their own.

Car seats, and the rules that change at the Channel

In the United Kingdom a child must normally use a child car seat until they are 12 years old or 135 cm tall, whichever comes first, and a seat belt thereafter; a doctor may issue an exemption certificate. Both the height-based R129 approval and the older weight-based R44 approval remain lawful to use. New booster cushions may be manufactured only in the higher group, while cushions already made to the lower one remain usable.

Height-based seats must be rear-facing until the child is over 15 months, and any front airbag must be deactivated before a rear-facing baby seat is fitted in a front seat — carrying a child rear-facing in front of an active airbag is unlawful. There is no requirement to keep a child rear-facing beyond 15 months.

The exceptions contain an asymmetry worth stating plainly. In most circumstances a child under 3 must always be in a child seat. In a licensed taxi or private hire vehicle where the driver does not provide a correct seat, children may travel without one but only on a rear seat — a child of 3 or over wearing an adult belt, a child under 3 unrestrained. A child of 3 or over may use an adult belt where the journey is unexpected, necessary and over a short distance. So the unexpected-necessity exemption is available only from the age of 3; for a child under 3 the only lawful route without a seat is a licensed taxi or minicab. The fixed penalty for a restraint offence is £100, rising to a court fine of up to £500 on prosecution.

Approval standards are international, so a seat marked to either approval is recognised across western Europe. What changes abroad is the threshold, and in one case the difference catches British families directly.

• France — a child under 10 must use an approved seat suited to their size, whatever the distance. A child under 10 may sit in front only where the vehicle has no rear seat with a belt, has no rear seats at all, has rear seats already occupied by children under 10, or where the child is rear-facing in a seat designed for it with the airbag deactivated.
• Spain — a child of 135 cm or under must use an approved restraint and, in vehicles of up to nine seats, must travel in the rear, with narrow exceptions. In taxis and private hire vehicles the professional driver is exempted from liability and the responsible adult bears the penalty.
• Germany — the threshold is 150 cm, not 135. A restraint is required for children up to their twelfth birthday who are shorter than 150 cm. A child lawfully belted without a seat in Britain may therefore require one in Germany.
• Italy — height-based at 1.50 m, and with an extra obligation that has no British equivalent: anti-abandonment devices have been compulsory since November 2019 when carrying children up to the age of 4. That is the requirement most likely to catch a British family driving there.

On hire cars, the rental trade body's own position is that the law does not require a rental company either to provide or to fit a child seat, which it treats as an accessory. The restraint duty falls on the driver, so responsibility for a correct and correctly fitted seat rests with the driver even where the company supplied it.

One thing cannot be stated, and the uncertainty is worth recording rather than resolving. The withdrawal of the older approval is a European measure, not a British one: in the European Union it was replaced for new approvals in September 2023, with stock already on the market saleable until September 2024. No British instrument ending its sale could be found, and official guidance still lists it as an approved standard. Sources disagree on how long such a seat may go on being used — one national guide gives 2032, another states there is no expiry at all — and nothing should be inferred from that disagreement except that it is unresolved.

Accommodation is almost entirely unregulated

This is a negative finding, and it is more useful than it sounds. No rule could be found requiring a cot or an extra bed to be available, specifying how many people may occupy a hotel room, or giving the phrase "family room" any defined meaning at all. Cot provision, extra beds, occupancy limits and what a family room contains are operator policy.

The one regulated layer is fire safety, and it works through risk assessment rather than prescription. Official guidance supporting the fire safety order lists unaccompanied children and young persons, and parents with children, among those especially at risk; suggests that very young children may be accommodated on the same level as the final exit, with enough staff to assist them; and asks whether escape routes are adequate for young and disabled people. It states expressly that it sets no prescriptive standards. So there is no rule that a child must be given a particular room, floor or escape route.

New Year, where the old assumption fails hardest

Older accounts of family travel at New Year assume a family turns up somewhere bright and watches. At both of Britain's largest New Year events that is now wrong, in two different ways.

London has been ticketed since 2014, and without a ticket there is no entry to the viewing areas. The event's own material states that it is not suitable for young children and strongly recommends not bringing them; that every person regardless of age needs a valid ticket; that nobody under 16 is admitted unless accompanied by an appropriate adult; that the event is standing only; and that there are no re-admissions or pass-outs of any kind once inside. Decisively for anyone with a small child: no chairs, pushchairs, prams, tables, camping equipment or awnings are permitted in the ticketed viewing areas — wheelchairs excepted throughout, and compact folding chairs permitted only in the accessible area. The same clauses appeared in the 2024 terms, so this is settled practice rather than one year's rule. Tickets are released in two timed batches and capped at four per purchaser, across six viewing areas each with its own entrance gate, and movement between areas on the night is not possible. Around 103,000 tickets were made available for the 2019 and 2022 events; no figure is published for the current one.

Edinburgh is stricter still. No person under 12 is permitted at the Street Party, the Concert in the Gardens or the Night Afore Concert, and anyone under 16 must be accompanied by an adult over 18 and must hold a full-price ticket. The Torchlight Procession is also ticketed and restricted to 12 and over, with under-18s requiring adult supervision. The free element is an unticketed live music trail, and genuinely family-oriented events are programmed separately — though the organiser's own answers to common questions describe the Torchlight Procession as one where young partygoers are welcome, which its own event page contradicts. Where the two differ, the event page governs.

Elsewhere in Europe the pattern is capacity control rather than exclusion. Berlin's gathering at the Brandenburg Gate is free but capped: tickets are free and must be reserved in advance, for around 20,000 places, with bag checks and no own food, alcohol or fireworks, and four firework-free zones applied across the city for 2025–26. Paris keeps a free, unticketed display on the Champs-Élysées, but the accompanying concert was cancelled at the request of the police prefecture on crowd-safety grounds after disorder and crowd surges the previous year — and the city's own advice is to be vigilant with young children and that pushchairs are not recommended. Métro stations along the route close from early afternoon.

Then there is the day after, where a statutory oddity catches people out. Scotland's New Year is two days by statute: the schedule to the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971 lists New Year's Day and 2 January for Scotland, with express provision for either falling on a Sunday. England, Wales and Northern Ireland have no New Year's Day entry in that schedule at all — the holiday rests on royal proclamation under the same Act. Substitute days where a date falls at a weekend are proclaimed too, which is why future dates have to be looked up rather than worked out.

Transport is the practical half of that. ScotRail runs no trains at all on New Year's Day, with services on 31 December running normally until about seven in the evening and then winding down — which makes a Scottish New Year a journey to plan around rather than through. In London on 1 January the Tube runs a reduced Sunday service, buses a Sunday service, and the Docklands Light Railway and Elizabeth line a Saturday service. On New Year's Eve night most London services run all night, with named exceptions, while central roads and several bridges close progressively from early afternoon. One thing has gone: free travel has ended. The transport authority states that it is not able to offer free travel on New Year's Eve and the early hours of New Year's Day, where once every service was free from late evening into the small hours. Paris still does it, with public transport free from five in the evening on 31 December until midday on 1 January.

As for attractions, there is no general rule and some national museums close on 1 January entirely, so opening has to be checked venue by venue.

The official safety advice is blunter than any brochure, and two lines of it are worth more than the rest. The London transport authority's is not to go to the display without a ticket, because entry will be refused, and to plan the route home in advance because nearby stations may be exit-only or interchange-only. Edinburgh's organiser advises agreeing meeting points before arrival, because phone signal in the area will be limited — which is the single most actionable thing on this subject for anyone with children. Neither event publishes a lost-child procedure; both point to stewards and security staff. Industry guidance to event organisers does recommend a missing-and-found-child policy and lost-and-found children's points, but it is addressed to organisers rather than families, and it says nothing about pushchairs in crowds, family viewing areas, or the crowd-density risks that fall specifically on children.

Health cover and insurance

Every member of a family needs a card of their own. A spouse, civil partner and children can be added to a single application, but each person receives a separate global health insurance card. The card is free, lasts up to five years, and a replacement may be applied for up to nine months before the current one expires.

What it covers is state healthcare that cannot reasonably wait until the traveller returns: emergency treatment and accident and emergency attendance, treatment or routine care for long-term or pre-existing conditions, and routine maternity care unless the purpose of the trip was to give birth. Treatments such as dialysis or chemotherapy should be arranged in advance. State healthcare is not always free — a patient may pay whatever a local resident pays. It does not cover repatriation, treatment in a private facility, or mountain or ski rescue, and it is not a replacement for travel insurance. Coverage extends to the European Economic Area, Montenegro, Australia, Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, St Helena, Tristan da Cunha and Ascension, and to Switzerland only for certain nationalities and residence statuses.

On insurance there is no rule binding a traveller leaving the United Kingdom, only advice — though local law in a destination may require medical insurance, sometimes as part of a visa application. The hard points are contractual rather than legal: existing conditions and pending tests or treatment must be declared, including mental health conditions, and failing to declare something may invalidate the policy; and activities such as bungee jumping or skydiving are not usually included as standard. Official guidance says nothing at all about children or family policies, which is itself worth knowing.

Dates to watch

Two of these fall within weeks. A rolled-up High Court hearing on 24 to 26 November 2026 will decide permission for judicial review of the competition authority's information notices in the family-seating case and, if permission is granted, the substantive claim. The authority's next case update is due in December 2026, the initial investigation phase having run from June.

On or after April 2027 come the duties under the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, which received Royal Assent on 3 April 2025 with an intended implementation period of at least twenty-four months. No commencement date has been set and there is no duty to comply until the Act is in force; statutory guidance was published on 15 April 2026. A qualifying event needs 800 or more people, public accessibility and entry checks such as tickets or passes, and event premises may be a building, other land, or both — so open-air sites are within scope. Both the London fireworks and Edinburgh's Street Party sit well above that threshold and operate entry checks, so both will be qualifying events once the Act commences.

Three things need re-checking rather than watching. Bank holiday substitute days for 2027 and 2028 are proclaimed rather than set out in the schedule, so they must be looked up and not calculated. Statutory attendance guidance in England has been revised three times in two years — August 2024, June 2026 and July 2026 — so any reliance on it dates quickly. And the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, which creates local authority registers of children not in school with penalties falling on education providers, is prospective and awaits commencement across 2027 and 2028; it does not amend the attendance offence or the penalty notice regime.

Two things are simply open. The European travel authorisation has no announced start date. And there is no scheduled change to British child car seat law, nor any British date ending the sale of the older approval.