Features

Nursery Chains: Award Winners - Family ways

The family-run Mulberry Bush in Lancashire, where all five of its settings are rated Outstanding, is this year’s Nursery Chain of the Year. By Catherine Gaunt

None of them thought that they would end up taking on the family business, but 26 years on from when their parents opened their first setting, these three siblings run five Outstanding nurseries together.

Jo Kinloch, along with her brothers Paul Robinson and Andrew Robinson, are all directors of Nursery World’s Nursery Chain of the Year for 2016, the Mulberry Bush Nursery Group.

All of the nurseries are graded Outstanding by Ofsted, with four of them gaining the grade within weeks of each other earlier this year. And all are located close together in the small town of Bury in Lancashire.

‘We opened our fifth nursery in Dumers Lane last September,’ says Jo Kinloch. ‘We were inspected after four and a half months. Then it was Tottington, Whitefield, Walmersley. We were on a rollercoaster; all a bit punch-drunk by the end of it.’

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