A nursery provider has shut down its five nurseries in the Bristol area while they were being investigated by Ofsted over safeguarding concerns. Last month, BristolLive reported that the Leaping Lambs nurseries in Keynsham and the Willsbridge area of South Gloucestershire both had their registrations suspended by Ofsted.
According to the Ofsted website, all five nurseries in the Bristol area by Leaping Lambs Nursery Ltd have now closed - Caterpillars Day Nursery in Bath, Broadland Bears and Leaping Lambs in Keynsham, Leaping Lambs Forest School in Willsbridge and Leaping Lambs nursery on Bath Road, Swineford.
In a statement, Leaping Lambs Nursery Ltd said: "I can confirm that this provider has resigned their registration with Ofsted."
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A letter on 'compliance action taken for childcare provision' was published about the nursery on Bath Road last week. In the letter, it says that concerns that the provider was not meeting legal requirements were identified in a visit on August 10.
It adds: "We also suspended the provider's registration on August 12, 2022 because we believe children may be at risk of harm. Suspension allows time for the provider to take steps to reduce or eliminate the risk of harm to children.
"The provider has a right to appeal against a suspension. The provider may not provide childcare for which registration is required while the suspension is in place and may commit an offence if they do so.
"On August 31, 2022, we carried out a regulatory visit. The purpose of the visit was to check whether the provider had met the safeguarding and welfare actions raised.
"We found that although they demonstrated that they had met some of the actions, we needed to gather further information from the provider. Before we were able to gather this additional information, the provider notified us on September 2, 2022, of their wish to resign their registration.
"Consequently, we lifted the suspension to allow us to resign their registration. They are no longer a registered childcare provider."
A similar letter has been published for Caterpillars Day Nursery in Bath, but not for the other three nurseries. Speaking last month, a parent, who asked not to be named, told Bristol Live that the issue was causing a "great deal" of stress.
"This has come as a massive shock to all of us. We are all now left struggling to find a new provider with other nurseries in the area having long waiting lists," they said.
"Our three year old has lots of friends he is unable to say goodbye to and the whole thing feels fairly insensitive to the needs of our children. Our son was thriving at Leaping Lambs so this is very disappointing news indeed. Particularly as we have only been told it's a safeguarding issue and given no further details."
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