Event Hire for Children’s Activity Providers: Setup Checklist & Costs

Sooner or later, every children’s activity business runs an event. A taster open day to fill the autumn term. An end-of-term showcase for parents. A grading, a stall at the summer fair, a holiday camp that has to feed forty children for a week.

Most providers handle the programme brilliantly and the setup badly. The sessions are planned to the minute, and then eighty parents arrive and there are twelve chairs.

That is rarely because the setup is difficult. It is because equipment hire runs on a handful of conventions that nobody explains the first time round. Kit goes out by period rather than by day. Delivery and collection are quoted separately from the items themselves. There is usually a minimum order before a van will leave the depot. For example, the published event hire terms at easyeventhireuk.com, in common with most of the sector, add a return-dirty charge of around 20% of the hire value to crockery and glassware that comes back unwashed.

Once the conventions are clear, the rest is arithmetic. What do you actually need, what does it cost, and where does the budget leak? This checklist answers all three.

Why the setup matters more than the programme

Events are how families discover clubs. A parent who watches a well-run showcase, sits comfortably and can actually see their child is a parent who signs up for next term. A parent standing at the back with a pushchair, unable to see anything, is not.

The demand is there to be captured. Sport England’s Active Lives Children and Young People Survey found that 49.1% of children and young people in England meet the Chief Medical Officers’ guideline of 60 minutes of activity a day, while 28.4% do less than 30 minutes. That second figure represents more than two million children, and it is your addressable market. Most of those families have no objection to activity clubs. They have simply never had a reason to walk into one.

An open day is that reason, which makes it worth a couple of hundred pounds to look like you know what you are doing.

The event hire checklist: what to book and what it costs

The six categories below cover almost every children’s activity event, from a two-hour taster session to a week-long camp. Work through them in order, because seating and space decisions constrain everything that follows.

1. Seating

The most underestimated item on every list, and the first thing parents notice when they walk in.

How many chairs do you need for a children’s showcase?

The working ratio for a display or performance is 1.8 adults per participating child, rising to around 2.5 if you welcome siblings and grandparents. A 60-child dance show is realistically a 110 to 150-seat event, not a 120-seat one.

Taster open days work differently. Most parents stay standing or watch from the side, so seating for roughly 40% of expected adults is enough, plus a small waiting area beside the sign-up desk. Order about 10% over your headcount either way. Empty chairs read as spare capacity; standing parents read as poor planning.

Which chairs should you hire, and what do they cost?

Four options, in ascending order of comfort:

• Folding or stacking chairs, roughly £2 to £4 each per hire period. Fine for anything under two hours.
• Padded banquet chairs, roughly £3 to £6. Worth the difference for a showcase where parents sit through a 90-minute programme.
• Children’s chairs, priced similarly to adult folding chairs, useful for craft and cookery sessions.
• Benching, cheaper per person for informal outdoor events, but less comfortable and harder to arrange safely around small children.

2. Tables

Two distinct jobs here, and they need different tables in different places.

What belongs on the registration table?

Your sign-up sheets, price list, card reader, name badges and staff. One 6ft trestle table, around £8 to £12, with a floor-length cloth so bags and boxes disappear underneath.

Position it so that nobody can enter the space without walking past it. That single decision converts more visitors than most of your marketing spend.

How many refreshment tables do you need?

Budget one 6ft table per 40 attendees for refreshments, plus one more for kit displays, trophies or class timetables. Poseur tables at bar height, roughly £15 to £25 each, suit adult mingling areas because they take up very little floor space.

3. Barriers and zoning

With children, zoning is a safeguarding decision as much as a presentation one. You need a visible physical line between the activity area and the spectator area, and another between both and the exit.

Crowd barriers run roughly £10 to £15 per section, and a section is typically 2 to 2.5 metres, so a 20-metre run needs eight to ten sections. Cones and tape are cheaper, and a row of tables cheaper still, but neither of them stops a determined four-year-old.

4. Shelter, shade and the wet weather plan

This is the line first-time organisers delete to save money, and it is the one that ruins events.

A 3x3m pop-up gazebo costs £60 to £150 for a weekend, while a larger marquee section runs £200 to £600. For summer events, parasols at £15 to £30 each over the seating and refreshment areas matter more than providers expect, because parents with babies will leave rather than sit in direct sun. For autumn and winter, patio heaters at £40 to £70 each buy you an extra half hour of people staying and talking, which is exactly when sign-ups happen.

5. Refreshments and cold storage

Food is a much bigger part of the children’s activity sector than it looks from the outside. The Department for Education’s holiday activities and food programme delivered almost five million HAF days across the 2023 to 2024 academic year, and every one of those days required a provider to serve at least one meal. If you run holiday provision, catering is not an add-on. It is core delivery, and it needs equipment.

• Mobile fridges or chillers, £80 to £150 for a weekend, essential for anything perishable across a full day.
• Urns and hot water boilers, £20 to £40. Parents forgive a great deal if there is tea.
• Reusable cups, jugs and dispensers, priced in pence per item and far cheaper than restocking disposables every event.
• Crockery and cutlery, worth hiring rather than buying if you only run camps in school holidays.

Build washing-up time into your pack-down schedule for that last category. It is the step everyone forgets at six o’clock on a Sunday, and it is the one with a surcharge attached.

6. Linen, waste and the small extras

Tablecloths at £5 to £10 each do more for the appearance of an event than anything else at that price. Add a bin or two, because venues frequently charge separately for waste removal, and a small table for the first aid point.

The event hire costs that catch providers out

Three charges sit outside the headline hire price, and all three routinely wreck a tight budget.

1. Delivery and collection charges

Almost never included in the quoted rate. Expect £50 to £150 depending on distance and access. Flag any awkward access when you request the quote, because surcharges for stairs, long carries and restricted delivery windows are common.

2. Damage, shortfalls and cleaning charges

Missing and broken items are usually charged at full replacement value, and unwashed catering items carry a surcharge on top. Count everything back in before the van leaves, because with forty children on site, breakages are likely rather than possible.

3. Minimum order values

Many hire companies set a minimum spend, often between £50 and £150. If your event genuinely needs only two tables, you will be paying the minimum regardless, so add the tablecloths and the spare chairs. At that point they are effectively free.

How much does it cost to host a children’s activity event?

Hosting a children’s activity event costs between £180 and £1,100. Depending on the format and scale of the occasion, core equipment hire spans three typical brackets. A basic setup, such as toddler soft play or standard garden games, typically runs between £60 and £150. Mid-tier packages featuring themed bouncy castles, mini sports arenas, or mobile laser tag sit between £180 and £350. Premium options, such as giant obstacle courses or interactive digital gaming rigs, range from £400 to £750. Beyond equipment hire, booking a community hall, arranging food, and supplying party bags will usually add an extra £150 to £350 to the final bill.

1. Club open day cost: a taster session for 40 families

A registration table, two refreshment tables, 30 chairs, a gazebo, an urn and cloths comes to roughly £180 to £280. Set against a term of fees from even three new families, this is not a close decision.

2. End-of-term showcase cost: seating 150 parents

150 padded chairs, four tables, a run of barriers, cloths and a chiller comes to roughly £750 to £1,100. Ticket the event at £5 a head and it broadly pays for itself.

3. Holiday camp cost: equipping a five-day club for 40 children

Tables and children’s seating for lunch, a chiller, an urn, crockery, cutlery and a gazebo for outdoor sessions comes to roughly £400 to £700 for the week, spread across five days of income.

Should you hire or buy?

Buy it if you will use it more than about six times a year and you have somewhere dry to store it. Tablecloths, an urn, a folding registration table and a handful of children’s chairs all pass that test comfortably.

Hire it if you need it in volume, only occasionally, or in a size you cannot transport. Nobody should own 150 chairs. Storing, cleaning and moving them will cost more over a decade than simply hiring them each time.

Before you book: what to confirm with the venue

Three things, in this order. Access times for delivery and collection. Whether the venue already holds equipment you can use at no cost, which is surprisingly often the case in church and community halls. Whether they charge separately for waste.

Then measure the space. The most common hire mistake in this sector is ordering seating that does not physically fit once you have allowed for a safe exit route.

Get your quote three to four weeks out. Summer and December are the pinch points, and by mid-November the good stock has gone.