Midford Road Nursery in Bath will close from 5 January 2023 due to what the owner is describing as “A recruitment shortage in the early years sector.”
Owner Amy Parfitt recently sent a letter out to the families who use the nursery, which reads, ‘As I have already made you all aware, we are facing a recruitment crisis in the early years sector, and I am not prepared to lower my expectations of the staff that I employ. I want to run a company true to the values I hold, and the high-quality staff are not available, even when we offer a wage well above all other nurseries and do everything we can to enrich their working lives whilst with us. We have unfortunately lost too many staff in a short space of time (mostly leaving the sector) and with the real shortage of people looking for work, we have not been able to turn this around as we had hoped. This has left me no choice to but close the nursery.
‘I understand this has a huge impact on every single one of you and I can only apologise with all my heart. Our government and society doesn’t value early years education and the impact it has until it no longer exists. This is shown by the continued underfunding and the lack of acknowledgement of what a hard and important job it is for the people within it.
‘We realise it is not local, but we do have limited availability in preschool at Neston Farm Nursery. You are also welcome to contact the team members for private nanny positions. Monkton Combe school accept funding and have a similar ethos to us, although shorter hours, they accept ages 2 and up.
‘I know you will read this with a mixture of emotions; this has not been an easy decision to come to and I have fought hard for this not to happen. I opened this nursery for my own babies 7 years ago and I am so very sad to see it end in this way.’
The two other nurseries also owned by Amy, Neston Farm Nursery and Oldfield Road Nursery, will continue to run as before. For more of these nurseries, go to www.thepowerofplay.co.uk