Nursery places

[MaJoady]

We've started looking for childcare for our first child due in December, (so wanting a nursery place from dec 2025). I knew about the shortage of childcare, but had no idea it would be so hard to even get nursery's to respond.

We didn't start looking until our 12 week scan, but it's crazy how many places have come.back with waiting lists for more than 18months in advance!

How are you all finding it? We're in the West Mids for reference

Oh and for people who are on their second pregnancy's do you have any experience of wait lists? Do they regularly go down because people have their children on multiple lists?

Also, how did you find nurserys? We're the first of our friends/family to have a baby so no word of mouth recommendations

We didn't have a problem finding a space for DS but that was 7 years ago. I think we started looking when he was about 3 months old for him to start at 8 months. We looked at several nurseries and then picked the one we liked best. We had a term time only contract for 3 days per week. South West.

For the current pregnancy, I informed our nursery at work in December 2023 that we'll probably need a space for July 2025. They only have 4 or 5 spaces in the baby room each year. We won't start properly looking at nurseries until after the summer, though. DD should be about 3 months by then as well, to start when she's 12 months. Our local area doesn't have a shortage of nursery places and we'll have a choice of using a local one or the one at my workplace. Not in the UK anymore, though, which also means we pay a lot less and will most likely go for a full time space (7.30am-5pm, 5 days a week...will cost about £250/month).