Kidsunlimited nursery group opens 61st setting

The chain now has 61 nurseries throughout England, employing more than 2,000 staff and offering more than 5,580 places.

The latest purpose-built setting has just opened in Sale, Cheshire, with unprecedented demand for its 100 places.

Set up in 1983 by Jean and Stewart Pickering, kidsunlimited celebrates its 30th anniversary next year.
The company’s development director Jeremy Clark said, ‘Occupancy in the new nursery has exceeded our expectation. The Sale nursery broke new records for growth, with a huge amount of enquiries, and parents signing up before the nursery opened.’

It follows the opening in Wokingham in March, a 73-place nursery in an office conversion, (below, top), and Maidstone in January, (below, bottom), a 96-place setting built on the site of an old paper mill.

Prior to that, a 96-place nursery opened in Reigate last October.

Mr Clark said that five more nurseries were expected to open during the company’s new financial year, which started on 1 May.

Building work is underway on three of the projects. A new 71-place nursery will open in Richmond-on-Thames in September from a converted building and during the same month an 80-place new build setting is due to open in Church Crookham in Fleet, Hampshire. A 65-place setting is planned to open in a purpose-built setting in Carshalton in Surrey in January next year.

Expansion is generally funded through existing cashflow and through work with a series of property developers who will finance the build. Kidsunlimited then leases the nursery building back from the developer.

Mr Clark said, ‘We think five nurseries a year is an achievable growth rate and we have five in mind.’
He added that kidsunlimited has identified 150 locations in the south-east of England as possible locations for future nurseries.

The company, which tends to specialise in purpose-built settings, is also looking for conversions from office buildings, particularly in more built-up areas in the south.