Staff at two nurseries belonging to New College Lanarkshire have been told they will close in a few weeks.
The early years centres at both the Coatbridge and Cumbernauld campuses will shut their doors for the final time at the end of the current term as the college looks to cut costs.
The college’s board claim that funding is down by £4.3million in real terms for the next financial year, and that in the last three years a total of more than £1million in additional funding has had to be found for nursery provision.
They say it is “impossible to sustain” that level of financial support. The college has been operating at a deficit for a number of years.
They say the decision was made following a "wide-ranging review of the nurseries" which involved staff, trade unions and external advisers.
However, Collette Bradley, Unison union steward at New College Lanarkshire refuted that.
She said: "The college seems to be pro-actively approaching the press with a number of inaccuracies. Contrary to what has been stated there has been no meaningful or proper consultation with trade unions.
"They are talking about external advisers but our intelligence suggests they didn't implement any of those recommendations around the nursery review, far less share them with the trade unions. They've spent public money engaging these external agencies then didn't follow the advice given.
"They've also started the 30-day consultation process [for redundancies] before the union even knew about these proposals."
Nursery staff discovered on Tuesday afternoon that the two centres will close in June. They have been informed and offered a choice of voluntary redundancy or redeployment where possible.
It's understood around 30 members of staff working at the two nurseries are affected by the announcement.
It’s not only staff who will be affected by the closures, the nurseries provide a childcare service for parents returning to study who may not otherwise be able to.
Many have already missed the enrolment cut-off dates for council-owned nurseries and could now struggle to find alternative childcare to allow them to continue their courses when college returns in August.
Lanarkshire Live also understands that the students' Hall of Residence at the college's Motherwell campus will close in an effort to cut costs with staff there also facing redundancy or redeployment.
A spokesperson for the college said: “Both centres have offered a superb service for children and parents for many years and the Board is extremely grateful for the invaluable contributions staff have made towards the education and care of young people in our region.
“However, the new financial reality resulting from the college’s real term funding allocation cut has made it impossible to continue to run the nurseries when our primary responsibility must be to achieve positive outcomes for our students.”
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