Nursery World - Owners fight council over living wage proposal

Nursery owners in Birmingham are launching a campaign against
council plans to make private, voluntary and independent (PVI) providers pay the living wage to retain early education funding.

Birmingham City Council had announced that from April 2015, PVI providers will be required to follow the Birmingham Business Charter for Social Responsibility, which stipulates that employees must be paid the living wage. Following claims from providers that this would put them out of business, the council has delayed imposing the requirement on them until September 2015.

The Department for Education (DfE) has said it is looking into the council's plan.

A number of nursery owners are campaigning to overturn the local authority's decision or, failing that, have the rate of early education funding increased to reflect their higher costs.

Some of the owners leading the campaign are Tricia Wellings of the Bright Kids group of three settings, and Sarah Presswood, owner of George Perkins Nursery. They have created a petition calling for the early years sector to be exempt from the business charter's living wage stipulation.

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