Lorraine Watts, manager of the Limehouse Arches Day Nursery in Tower Hamlets borough, told Nursery World, 'We have lost three children already because of what happened to Lehmann Brothers. We are right in Canary Wharf and 5,000 jobs have gone, so it's bound to have an effect. It's having a knock-on effect on everyone, even the small kiosk we have near here.'
She added that fortunately the 45-place nursery is not heavily dependent on parents working in the City. Kim Arrowsmith, manager of the Matchbox day nursery, said that while the nursery had some children of city workers, many of her clients work in education or the health service.
Glen Perrott, whose four HRH nurseries in Cambridgeshire are within commuting distance of London, said a mother and father of children at her Roundabout nursery in St Ives, Huntingdon, had both lost their jobs in the same week.
She said, 'We are trying actively to support people, because after all, they have supported us. This nursery is just three years old and these parents have been instrumental in its success. So when they hit hard times, we have to be supportive.'
She added, 'Nursery owners who think that money is the most important part of their business will fail in this current climate. You have got to show a human face.'
Her daughter Charlotte now works in the nursery business because she sees it as 'job security' after being made redundant as a scientist working for a pharmaceutical company.
As nannies are often employed by parents working in the City, there is an expectation that the banking crisis will impact on them. Asa Nilsdotter of payroll service Nannytax said that its Nanny Share department had become very busy in recent weeks dealing with requests from families seeking either part-time or shared nanny arrangements.
She added that while this could indicate parents having to scale back their childcare arrangements, there were also opportunities for nannies to take on additional work, as some parents are having to work extra hours.
Oliver Black, director of childcare agency Tinies, said there were signs that some mothers were returning early from maternity leave because there was a 'great need for parents to keep working to pay sometimes very large mortgages'.
But while childcare could be regarded as a 'good recession business', the full ramifications for provision was not yet clear and worse could follow, as other banks faced problems.
Mr Black said another factor was that many City workers had effectively been living way beyond their means because a large proportion of their annual bonus was made up of shares which could not be sold for three years. 'The problem is that some people have borrowed against that stock to pay for houses, and when a bank goes bust that stock is worth zero,' he added.
