Fran Scales, who has run the Goschen Road nursery in Carlisle with her husband David since 1983, said, 'The last year has been horrendous. If you expand and take on new members of staff, how are you supposed to manage? The system is unnecessarily unwieldy - there must be an easier way. Ofsted have to sort it out, or people are going to end up having nervous breakdowns. You can't run a business under these conditions.'
The Goschen Road nursery has been waiting two to three months on average and in one instance as long as six months to receive criminal records checks. In June Ms Scales sent a disclosure application for a new member of staff to Ofsted to counter-sign, only to check up later and find no record of it having been received. She re-submitted the application by registered mail. David Scales said he had heard that another local nursery had also resorted to sending in an application for a criminal record check by registered post after it had apparently gone astray.
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