Nursery capacity in Britain is far outstripping demand, with more than one tenth of nursery places now vacant, according to a survey published last week.
The Laing and Buisson survey of more than 700 daycare nurseries across the UK found that while capacity rose 16 per cent in the year to January 2003, demand fell by 9 per cent, leaving a vacancy rate of 13.5 per cent.
The rise in registered places from 390,500 to 453,000 has been largely attributed to Ofsted standardising child:space ratios, so eliminating some social services' stringent space requirements, and registering new places in many day nurseries. However, places have not been filled quickly, with the number of children attending both full- and part-time falling from 446,400 to 408,000.
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