Tippitoes Narrow Swing Shut Safety Gate

I would not recommend this gate to anyone. This is not a safe safety gate, and I find it hard to see why it won multiple awards. Most safety gates require two actions to open them e.g. pressing the handle a certain way, and then maybe lifting the handle. Failure to do both of these actions should prevent the gate from opening. The complexity of these two actions should be enough to prevent a toddler from opening the gate - hense the 'safety' in safety gate.

To open this gate you are supposed to press the buttons on the handle and then lift. However it is quite easy to just lift the gate, and it will open. I know this because my toddler did that, and tumbled down the stairs. Luckily she was alright as there was no stair gate at the bottom of the stairs. I hate to think what could have happened.

If you think about a toddler at a gate, it is very plausable that they would push the gate up. They are after all quite short people so pushing up on the horizontal bar at the top of the gate is easy (an adult could not push up the gate as they are too tall). Toddlers also grab onto the rails of gates and shake them - the gate can quite easily open this way as well.

The gate would have been safer if the user was required to push in *both* buttons. The safety gate fails again as only one needs to be pushed, and an inquisitive toddler can push that button as it is at about eye level, right in front of them.

There is also no safetey stopper to stop the gate opening in a certain direction. On our other safety gate (from Lindam) there is a little nob below the gate which you can set to prevent the gate from opening out, or in. A safety stopper like this would have helped.

How on earth this safety gate won an award from the magazine Practical Parenting beggers believe. At the time of writing, Mother Care nor Argos have any of Tippitoes products for sale on their website, and I can only guess that they are better judges of safe products than Practical Parenting.