ShinyDysonHereICome, Bubble99, KatyMac & Nursery Owners....Can I pick your brain Please

[Upsadaisy]

Original post was in legal/moneymatters link is:

OOps www.mumsnet.com/Talk/2230/501340

Thinking of setting up a children's nursery or buying an established one if I could raise the money.

Any advice, information, words of wisdom would be much appreciated....please no laughing.

& am curious whats the biggest headache regards running a children's nursery?

Biggest headache - STAFF
Getting them to understand your ethos, principles and way of doing things.

balancing the books - not being able to afford to pay a lot of money to staff as the fees from parents do not cover all the overheads.

Just to add to what Nurseryvoice has already said, staffing is proving even more of a headache in some areas where Sure Start children's centres are paying their nursery staff a LOT more than the private sector can afford to.

Due to daycare standard staff:child ratio's staffing will be your biggest expense- and a HUGE one at that.

You would need to be able to afford a commercial mortgage which (I think) means putting down at least a 25% deposit. Your premises would need to be very big to accomodate the number of children necessary to make the business viable.

Your first point of contact should be your Childcare Development Officer at your local authority.

What area are you in?
Might be worth doing a childcarelink search to see how many nurseries are in your area.

Childcare Link

To make the business viable how many children would you reccommend accommodating?

I'm in the Cleveland area and have done a search already. If I set up from scratch i know the area I will do so in as childcare there is practically non existent despite a high demand.

and is it worth renting a premises? Rather than buying?

(So far) Problems:
Funding
Staffing/Ratios
Surestart Centres
People laughing
Having enough children

Minimum numbers of children for a viable nursery are apparently 50 (so of course I am opening with 30)

Can't see a big issue with renting, apart from possible restrictions on what internal work you could do. For example, a nursery needs far more toilets than an office... so when renting you may need to add more toilets and make changes to internal walls.
Another thing to add in to your calculations, is that the registration process can take many months... during which time I think you need to 'own' the premises (be that actually owning it, or renting it). So I would expect that initially there would be a 3 to 4 month period when you are paying out for accommodation but not getting any money in. Anyone know for sure if you need to own/be renting the premises for the initial Ofsted registration inspection? I can't imagine landlords would be happy having Ofsted come in to check a premises, when you weren't paying rent for it!

Thanks for your replys...I'm working shifts at the minute so very tired. Didn't want to not reply and say thank you for info and will reply properly in a few days when shifts finish. Aiming to get to the phone friday and start doing some local sniffing out of whats possible.