IT doesn’t take much of a leap of the imagination to picture what it must have been like for two five-year-old girls to find themselves locked in a dark church crypt for two hours while all their friends went to the cinema.

The girls went to the toilet in the crypt of St Paul’s Church in Holgate just before the cinema trip in the February half term. Staff of the St Paul’s Out of School Club failed to do a head count before setting off for the cinema - and locked the door to the crypt, with the two children inside and the lights off.

It beggars belief they didn’t realise, while buying cinema tickets, that two children were missing.

The club’s manager, who was in charge on the day, has now resigned. And in initial findings, Ofsted inspectors who investigated the case have rapped the club for a “serious breach of requirements” which left children at “considerable risk of harm”.

Ofsted has issued a welfare requirements notice instructing the club to make staff fully aware of safety protocols - including that children should always be “within sight or hearing of adults”. The club could face prosecution if it fails to do so.

A full report will be published in due course. For now, however, Ofsted has stopped short of taking away the club’s registration.

Ofsted acted rapidly and correctly in this case. This was an appalling lapse by the St Paul’s Club. But it does seem to have been an aberration.

Parents will make up their own minds about whether they trust the club in future. But the member of staff in charge on the day has left, and we would hope the club has learned its lesson.

Pending the publication of Ofsted’s full report, it should perhaps be given one more chance.