Nursery closure - lack of demand

[Nursery78]

A well-established nursery local to me has just closed due to ‘lack of demand’.

This is surprising. We have few nurseries - and the waiting lists are crazy. I’ve been on one for two years.

The nursery was only operating 9-3.45 during term time. Morning and afternoon sessions.

I can’t help but think… is this a realistic business model in an age of both parents needing to work full time to afford nursery?

To afford a house here (in London) requires two good salaries - I’m not sure realistically how many parents could do term-times only / such short days without have to pay twice (for a nanny).

Interested to know if anyone else has seen similar. It surprises me they didn’t just extend their hours to be honest - no shortage of demand for longer hours.

If they are staffed predominantly by women with school-aged children (like all the nurseries around here are), they may have found it too difficult to staff opening for the holidays as well.

Where I live (Yorkshire)these aren't called nurseries, they're pre-schools and run 9-3 ish term time only (private nurseries run all year round and much longer hours). The one my dc went to is thriving! I sent my dc because I was a SAHM but wanted them to have some pre school before school. Some of the other dc there had childminders and grandparents doing pick up/drop off. It's only a fairly small set up though and is staffed by local mums with school age dc.

Yes probably lack of demand because of the hours

We have a few nurseries which operate these hours, but they are council run and mainly take kids who are entitled to the 15 free hours for 2/3 year olds. I think that’s mainly kids who are disadvantaged in some way (low income, disability ect).

As you say it’s useless for anyone who works.

They don’t have the best facilities, so it makes me uncomfortable that such a stark divide happens so early for kids.

The same happened to DS’s nursery, it was also TTO and short days. It attracted only really SAHMs looking for preschool and/or a bit of a break. It was really popular but if they have the staff there all day and people only want mornings, or if hardly anyone wants Mondays then it’s a struggle especially as it was a small site so they couldn’t take that many kids at once. There was also more to it involving a purchase some years ago by a big group that own a lot of private schools and are notorious for buying then shutting down the smaller ones so they can grab the property and then funnel the kids into the larger sister schools.

Where do you live? In Southeast London several primary schools are closing down or undersubscribed because there simply isn’t the amount of children to fill them? If this is a Pre-school nursery (rather than daycare) it could be the same reason.

To afford a house here (in London) requires two good salaries - I’m not sure realistically how many parents could do term-times only / such short days without have to pay twice (for a nanny).

In my experience the paying twice is more common than you might think. My older DD is at a private prep and I only know 1 family that has 2 working parents and no nanny. The rest either have a SAHP so are paying the fees on one salary (possibly some help from grandparents), or they both work and they have a nanny in addition to the school fees. I even know a couple of SAHMs with au pairs to help out. Our neighbours girls go to a term time only nursery and state school and they also have a nanny.

There are also hardly any traditional day nurseries in our part of London. Within a reasonable walk there’s one with a mega wait list that I honestly found a bit depressing when I visited and another big chain that has an awful rep and recently temporarily closed following a serious incident. I only know of 1 childminder locally and she doesn’t advertise and only works via referral.

A very popular nursery near me also closed recently, after around 20 years, also in London.

Opening hours were similar. As PP said, for a nursery with those opening hours, it’s not for parents who work full time and they are therefore reliant on funded hours.

Funded hours don’t pay enough to allow a nursery to remain open, especially after the cost of everything has gone up.