How to find a nursery?

[AyeWhySWIM]

I'm looking for a nursery place for my ds who'll be 10 months when he starts but don't know how to be sure that I've found all the nurseries in our local area beyond those I've seen myself or heard of by word of mouth. I'm not happy with the ones I've seen so far and there just don't seem to be many around, particularly independent. Is there a good website I'm missing? I asked the local council for a list but it only had childminders on.

Yellow pages, google, job ads in papers (not good if they're always looking for staff). A good nursery will advertise unless they're already totally full.

All nurserries have to be inspected by OFSTED so if you go to the OFSTED website and put your postcode in, then childcare providers (non domestic premises) I think - that differentiates the search for childminders, it should give you a whole list of local nurseries and tells you how far away from the centre of the postcode they are. Also, most local councils have a Childrens Services Department and if you contact them, they usually have a list of all nurseries and childminders in your town / area.

Hope that helps.

Thanks! Had a good trawl through ofsted this evening and disappointingly it seems as though I have encountered all of the relevant providers in our area. It's just that there aren't many and the ones that exist aren't really our cup of tea - not happy that we're going to have to make a choice based on something that's 'acceptable' despite the gut feeling being not quite right. Nothing else we can do I guess. I was really hoping I'd missed something.
Thanks again.