When Kristina Dooley, 36, from Uxbridge, returned to her job in the City after maternity leave, she found her son, Alex, a place at a private nursery. When that closed after a year due to staff shortages she was relieved to get him into Uxbridge Early Years Centre. Now this nursery has announced it will shut at the end of December. “We received an email out of the blue in August saying the nursery was in financial deficit and they were taking emergency measures to close it,” she says. “I just thought ‘Not again!’”
Uxbridge Early Years is one of three nurseries closing in the area and it’s happening across the capital. Four thousand early childcare providers in the UK have shut in the last year due to chronic underfunding, rising energy and running costs and staff shortages, and it’s forcing the remaining nurseries to hike up their fees. This week, a new survey found that more than one in four young parents are cutting their working hours or leaving their jobs in response to soaring nursery costs. The average is now £18,000 a year in London and £12,000 elsewhere.
