My nursery are holding me to a 3month notice period

[Livieb]

hello mums!
My one year old goes to a nursery in
Shepherds bush and we are in the process of buying a
place in tooting bec.
We have to complete at the beginning of April for various reasons
which is also when we need to move out of shepherds bush.
The nursery are being completely inflexible and making us pay till the middle of may. We can't afford to pay for childcare twice for the 5 weeks where we will be living in tooting and still paying for our nursery in shepherds bush.
I can't take 5 weeks holiday, and we can't commute between the 2. It's too far. And pushing the completion date back is not an option either.
I really don't know what to do, and for a family-run nursery it feels like they are being very harsh. I understand that they have terms and conditions but sometimes life gets in the way. Would it really hurt them to allow us a month's grace?
Love to know if this is normal, have people managed to negotiate their way round similar situations?
Thanks in advance

I think the nursery is behaving reasonably. You note that they are 'family-run' - presumably then they are an independent rather than a chain and probably have pretty tight profit margins. With 1:3 ratios at that age, an empty space will actually 'cost' them a fair bit. As your child is one, I'm assuming he/she has been there somewhere betwen 6 and 12 months so the nursery has not had years of fees and goodwill out of you.

If they are able to fill the place immediately from a waiting list, this might be the basis for a negotiation i.e. you ask if they can give you 50-100% of your costs back if the place is actually filled, but they may not be able to guarantee this until they know themselves. Otherwise you might be able to get any food element refunded for those five weeks as the nursery can probably give notice now to the supplier - that's probably only a few pounds but might a bit of a difference.

I would have thought they could fill the place quickly, in London, in which case they are being arses. But it is in the contract so I expect there's nothing you can do.

We had to give two months notice to our nursery. They are a business but if they have a waiting list and can fill the place easily then they could offer flexibility but they dont have to. I dont know the distance involved but i would personally keep her there if i was paying and stomach the commute.

I get a friend to call and enquire about waiting list times for a LO the same age as yours & if there's no waiting list then I'm sure they'll stand by their notice period. If however they could fill your place, I'd go back & try to reach some sort of compromise & if they wont back down, id make it clear that you might still use the space from time to time so they must keep it open for you ie not earning twice from 1 place!!