Nursery World - On loan

Nurseries, pre-schools and playschemes are finding a saviour in a unique financial organisation when other lenders have turned them down. Karen Faux reports As Lis Grant-Wilson of Happy Faces Pre-School puts it, Charity Bank 'saved our bacon'. It came to the rescue when no other bank would consider giving Happy Faces a loan, and thanks to its advance of 45,000, the nursery now occupies new premises in Tonbridge, Kent. 'We were frantic to find a new home when we were booted out of the modular building we occupied at a secondary school,' says Lis. 'We had to find somewhere that was accessible to the children who already attended, because so many working parents relied on us for daycare.'

As Lis Grant-Wilson of Happy Faces Pre-School puts it, Charity Bank 'saved our bacon'. It came to the rescue when no other bank would consider giving Happy Faces a loan, and thanks to its advance of 45,000, the nursery now occupies new premises in Tonbridge, Kent. 'We were frantic to find a new home when we were booted out of the modular building we occupied at a secondary school,' says Lis. 'We had to find somewhere that was accessible to the children who already attended, because so many working parents relied on us for daycare.'

The only option was to build a new pre-school on a nearby piece of wasteland. Despite help from Kent County Council and raising an impressive 90,000, Happy Faces was still significantly short of the sum it needed to erect a modular building and undertake such fundamental work as laying pipes for water and gas.

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