Nurseries on work premises

[Doyso]

I'm a new mom of a 10 week old baby, and thinking about childcare options for when I return to work. It occurred to me that this would be so much easier if my workplace had a nursery on the premises that I could drop my child to and can easily pop in and out throughout the day if needed and pick them up after work and we go home together. Does anyone's workplace offer this service? Like a nursery in partnership with a workplace? If not why do you think this sort of service is not readily available in the UK? Seems like it would make life easier for a lot of families unless I'm missing something?

Busy Bees was literally created under this model, 40 plus years ago. They ran nurseries for hospitals, Land Rover factories, all sorts. It's nothing new.

With my first, they had an on-site nursery. We could salary sacrifice and I saved 30% off the bill (tax and ni contributions). This was before tax free child care so a huge saving. It sos however impact my pension contributions as salary was over £3k less and would have impacted future mat leave too.

I had flexi working and my ex still did a drop off so I could fit my hours in. It was only ten minutes away!

I never popped in during the day as this would have unsettled my DD

I work in a hospital in SW England and they have an on site nursery run by an independent childcare provider company.

Handy in that I can drop my son off and be in work straight away, no drop him off at 7 to get to work for 8 and I can pick him up as soon as I finish. Also I'm on site if anything were to happen and I can easily attend meetings if I have any concerns (although this has only happened once in 2 years!)

Not so handy that the hospital I work at is about 30-40 mins away depending on traffic and I'm now on mat leave with our 2nd son. Both will be going to the nursery when I go back to work so in order to keep our place we have to make the trip minimum once a week which is a bit of a pain....

Also to add, I do not and would absolutely discourage 'popping in' during the day unless breastfeeding or for another more pressing reason other than just because you want to.

This would absolutely unsettle most children and if I do have to go to the nursery I do it with my hood up and creep round the back 🤣

My husband works for a University so has an on-site nursery we use (which is an amazing nursery). But it's on a spaced out campus and quiet often I'll do drop off/pick up if my husband is on annual leave or working from home. We don't get a discount but do get salary sacrifice which does save money.

I don't get what you mean about "popping in and out". Our nursery certainly wouldn't want you do that, it'd be massively disruptive plus we're actually at work when our son is at nursery and employers aren't going to look favourably at you doing this either!

I've just read through the full thread. For us the work place nursery works and we prefer it any of the nurseries close to home. The nurseries near our house are situated next to main roads on industrial estates with small outdoor areas. The nursery we use is situated beside woodland, all the rooms have free flow access to their gardens, loads of green space and access to allotments and the outdoor time was something that was important to us.

It's only a 20 min drive to nursery and my own work place isn't that much further away so not a massive commute and while my husband logistically does pick up/drop offs more often his own job means he finishes at 5 whereas I may need to stay late at times on the very rare occasion a crisis comes up(social work employee). We view the commute as extra time with our son we wouldn't get if he went to a nursery close to us.

We've only been called a handful times to collect him when he's been unwell in 2 years but we split this between us. It certainly doesn't fall on one person. And we live in a small city anyway so issues of play dates and being far away isn't an issue and my son will be going to school nursery when he is four.

There's a lot to think about when choosing a nursery but I just wanted to highlight there can be benefits which has worked for us!