Parents have criticised an official report on Bright Start Nursery, in Brighton, saying that councillors are being asked to decide whether to close it or save it based on flawed information.
The criticisms follow a meeting last week between Labour councillor Jacob Taylor and representatives of parents, staff and supporters who want to save the council-run nursery.
Councillor Taylor, who went to Bright Start as a youngster, had hoped that a move to the Tarner Family Hub, in Ivory Place, off Morley Street, Brighton, might placate campaigners.
The nursery is currently based in Barrack Yard, near the Prince Regent swimming pool, just off North Road, Brighton, in a building that the council said was unsuitable and required expensive repairs.
Since the meeting last Wednesday (1 November), one of the parents, Suda Perera, has emailed councillors setting out a number of concerns.
The email urges councillors to delay making a decision at Hove Town Hall today Monday (6 November) until those concerns are properly addressed.
She sent the email to Councillor Taylor, the co-chair of Brighton and Hove City Council’s Children, Families and Schools Committee, copied to council leader Bella Sankey and members of the committee.
It said: “Firstly, I just want to reiterate the parents’ gratitude to you for holding yesterday’s meeting and also for keeping the door open for further meetings.
“The parents were really happy and grateful that you took the time and care to listen to us and that you seemed genuinely willing to engage in proper consultation, so thank you.
“That being said, I also want to have it in writing that the Bright Start parents’ position with regard to the ‘options proposal’ being considered at the (Children, Families and Schools Committee) on Monday is that we are strongly against the proposed move to the Tarner Family Hub and the considerable reduction in provision.
“We are also concerned that the council officers advising on this change are not making information available in a transparent way to both parents and councillors.
“(Officers) said that the Barrack Yard building was owned by Freedom Leisure. We checked the Land Registry today and it says that the building is owned by Brighton and Hove City Council.
“This was not the only time in the meeting where we felt we were being presented with inaccurate information. We must therefore ask if you are sure this report has been prepared properly?
“To illustrate the point further the options report states that the nursery has the highest subsidy of all council nurseries with a subsidy of more than £5,000 per child in April 2023.
“Taken out of context, this number would truly be shocking. However, through the winter and spring of 2023 there was a moratorium in place preventing the nursery from taking new children.
“This was an issue we raised at the time after our daughter had her place on the waiting list for (Bright Start Nursery) withdrawn just a month before I was due to go back to work.
“Many local families were also discouraged from taking their children to the nursery due to the ongoing instability around its future.
“With that in mind, the subsidy figure cited cannot be said to be an accurate reflection of Bright Start’s ability to generate income.
“Instead, it very much looks like a highly manipulative approach to influencing the decisions of democratically elected councillors.
“Thank you for taking the time to explain the dire financial position that the council finds itself in.
“As many of us are public sector workers, we understand that difficult decisions have to be made. We do not envy you at all.
“However, as we kept reiterating last time, these decisions need to be made with full transparency and with an awareness of context and facts.
“To understand the changes that the council are proposing to make we are requesting
- A breakdown of savings the council expect to make by moving a reduced provision to Tarner. We are sceptical of the claim that the move to Tarner would end or minimise the council subsidy. Research shows that larger childcare settings generate more income as they can maximise occupancy and achieve economies of scale. You can also subsidise more vulnerable children’s costs with fee-paying children’s fees.
- A copy of the much-cited Suitability Report, so that we can understand what 46 per cent suitability means. Please can it also be noted that no parents are complaining about the suitability of the building. For a city centre nursery, it is perfectly spacious, it has more outdoor space than the Tarner Centre and its nearest competitor, the WRAP nursery has no outdoor space at all.
- Further analysis from the childcare brokerage officer of how many settings in the local area actually match Bright Start’s day care offer and how many spaces they have. Please can it be noted that traveling two miles across the city centre at rush hour is not a feasible public transport undertaking for most families. Families should reasonably be able to access the childcare they need with a mile of home.
“Bright Start staff are highly qualified professionals who offer excellent care to some of the city’s most vulnerable children and (Bright Start Nursery) is a setting of sanctuary.
“Poor pay for childcare workers has driven the crisis in childcare recruitment in which 84 per cent of nurseries are struggling to recruit staff.
“Low pay has also forced many nursery workers to need in-work benefits – again another cost to the council elsewhere.
“We do not want this team, who do such an excellent job of providing for our children split up. As the leader of the council has said herself, our educators deserve better.
“Bright Start has a significant number of disadvantaged children, with 28 per cent receiving the Early Year’s Pupil Premium.
“Fifty-two per cent of (Bright Start Nursery) kids are from non-white British backgrounds and 67 per cent have English as an additional language.
“Twenty-four per cent have SEND (special educational needs and/or disabilities). As a percentage of the 65 children currently on roll, these figures equate to more than the 16 places that are being offered in the move to Tarner.
“We would like to know how removing both Bright Start and St Bartholomew’s from the most diverse part of city will impact the council’s equality commitments, particularly the commitment to anti-racist education and tackling systemic inequality?
“(Bright Start Nursery) is one of the few affordable, accessible nurseries in the city centre, offering 51-week 8am to 6pm care to anyone, nought to five years old, regardless of background or circumstance.
“As we have outlined extensively, we have significant issues with the way in which the council is defining sufficiency.
“Our experience on the ground is that there not enough spaces for struggling working families, particularly those with children under two.
“We conceded that there are sufficient nursery places if by ‘sufficient’ you simply mean the number of theoretically available nursery and childminder spaces in relation to the number of children under five in the city.
“But this measure includes private nurseries that cost £100 a day, nurseries with hours much reduced from Bright Start Nursery’s 8am to 6pm offer and nurseries which would be a two-hour walk from (Bright Start Nursery) with small children.
“This is meaningless to us. Have you tried to travel two miles in Brighton at 8am or 6pm? One of the reasons Bright Start is so popular is its central location.
“Bright Start is the only remaining significant nursery provision in the city centre. It is also easily accessible by bus and train making it a lifeline for commuting parents.
“A two-mile journey can add well over an hour each way to a parent’s daily commute. Of the nurseries that are within a two-mile radius, at least 15 are more than a mile away or up steep hills and inaccessible with buggies or small walking children.
“Many Bright Start parents don’t drive and would therefore have to add hours to their commute to and from nursery away from the city centre.
“One of the reasons Bright Start is so popular is because finding the right nursery provision for babies is almost impossible.
“As you know, I live in your ward of Bevendean and Moulsecoomb and travel all the way to Bright Start because Jump Start Nursery (which is of course much closer to me) no longer has a baby room and the University of Brighton nursery also closed.
“There is a domino effect of these closures that means good nursery provision is increasingly hard to come by. Since the last sufficiency assessment Pixies nursery (another city centre provider) has closed reducing provision further.
“Bright Start parents spent months campaigning against closure last time and we proved beyond doubt how valuable the service is to generations of families in Brighton.
“We are exhausted. We have been working around the clock this year to stop this proposal, again. Do you honestly think anybody would do that if there were plenty of alternatives?
“When I asked (a council officer) to specifically name one nursery that offers comparable care, she offered Tarnerland.
“Despite the fact moving to Tarnerland would cost my family over £50 a week extra for comparable childcare, I called Tarnerland this morning to ask if they would be able to accommodate my one-year-old who needs full-time care.
“The receptionist said verbatim: ‘I’m afraid our availability is very limited now and I can’t say there’s availability full time. We may be able to find you a few sessions here and there.’
“Additionally, as someone with chronic mobility issues, I find it incredibly difficult to access. It was up a very steep hill and difficult for me to push a pram to it so Tarnerland’s location is practically inaccessible to me.
“To reiterate the parent’s position that we discussed yesterday: We are calling on councillors to delay making decisions on options on Monday and take more time to consider
- Securing funding for Bright Start Nursery, as it is, for 2024-25 to allow time to explore its future thoroughly and in partnership with the community including consideration of
- redeveloping Bright Start Nursery as part of the redevelopment of the Prince Regent or
- using the cost of the sale of Barrack Yard to fund the redevelopment of the nursery elsewhere or
- moving Bright Start Nursery to another city centre location within a 5 to 10-minute walk from Barrack Yard
- If none of the above are possible, we would then request that under two provision be retained at Tarner, where there are plenty of additional rooms that could be used for this purpose – as they were during the pandemic.
“Thank you for the time and effort that you’ve taken to engage with us. I know you must be extraordinarily busy but please could you let me know as soon as possible if the Options Proposal Report will still be considered at the Monday meeting?
“As I mentioned yesterday, this is causing a lot of distress to the families concerned and a lot of work for us to keep our childcare.
“As we requested in our joint letter that we sent to you when you were elected in May, we would really like to not have to go through the process of campaigning to save our nursery again if we can find a more collaborative way to come up with a mutually agreeable solution.”
Bright Start might want to consider the Community Ownership Fund. Could be a lifeline they need to continue.