Greater Manchester nurseries struggling amid rising costs

The cost of living crisis is heaping pressure on parents' budgets for childcare

Twenty one nurseries in Greater Manchester have closed amid staff shortages and rising costs, figures show.

Ofsted data shows the nurseries closed in the city region in 2021, with many shutting in deprived areas.

Nurseries in those areas mostly received their funding from the government, which pays for up to 30 hours of childcare each week per child.

Managers said some staff are opting for higher paid jobs in other sectors.

While nurseries can charge parents for any hours beyond their statutory entitlement, staff say families are finding it hard to find the money as finances are squeezed by the cost of living crisis.

Hailey Mills, a manager at Littleways Day Nursery in Longsight, said: "We definitely wouldn't be able to stay open if we just relied on the government funding.

"You'd be at a loss every day."

Hailey Mills, manager at Littleways Day Nursery

In England, nurseries apply to their local authority for funding, which is paid out via the Nursery Education Funding (NEF) from the Department for Education.

All three and four-year-olds receive at least 15 hours of free childcare per week, for 38 weeks of the year.

For the Little Days Nursery, this amounts to £4.80 per hour that nurseries receive for children aged three and four.

But Mrs Mills said that despite receiving some extra funding from parents, a doubling of the nursery's energy bill and an increase in the national living wage set for April means the nursery will struggle.

She said: "Parents have been honest and told us that everything is going up and they would not be able to afford any increase in costs.

"I don't know if the sector as a whole will continue."

Littleways Day Nursery in Longsight is among those under pressure

The Big Life Nursery, also in Longsight, where three-quarters of the children are funded exclusively by NEF payments, is struggling too.

Rukhsana Ahmed, who oversees the nursery along with another in Cheetham, says each are losing £30,000 a year.

The Big Life Group social enterprise that runs the nursery used to run six in total, all in what Ms Ahmed described as deprived areas, but four have closed in the last six years.

She said: "We won't be able to subsidise the nurseries forever."

Kate Hardy, 39, says she pays £1,800 a month for her two children, one and four, to attend a private nursery in Chorlton, a more affluent area of Manchester.

She says that childcare costs, along with the cost of petrol and food rising, has pushed her and her partner, both university academics, into debt of £400 each month.

She said: "The nursery is the biggest outgoing. It's twice our mortgage."

A Department for Education spokesman said: "We have spent more than £20 billion over the past five years to support families with the cost of childcare and the number of places available in England has remained stable since 2015, with thousands of parents benefitting from this support.

"We're also investing millions in better training for staff working with pre-school children and have set out plans to help providers in England run their businesses more flexibly."