Editor's view
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Hard times may have come, but this is no way to close a nursery.
Not so 'Happy Times'! A name like that can be something of a burden when you run into trouble, and the irony will certainly not be lost on the staff and parents left in the lurch by the sudden closure of the south-west London nursery group (see News, page 4).
Happy Times saw its fortunes change frequently in the 11 years since it launched in 1997. Our June 2001 edition of Nursery Chains recorded the group, based in 'Happy Towers', as owning four large nurseries, with plans to develop another five sites. In 2004, it garnered £5.7m of new financing to 'continue its expansion programme', though by then it was down to three nurseries.
Always big on razzmatazz and marketing, it opened its Fulham setting in 2006 after four years of development and £4.5m of investment, flagging up a state-of-the-art lighting system and colour therapy! TV chef Ainsley Harriott was in attendance.
Yet two months later, parents and children marched to protest about the closure of the Happy Times nursery at Ravenscourt Park Hospital, with the company and the NHS Trust in dispute about late payment of rent.
Now the remaining two nurseries have closed, in a brutal fashion, with staff and parents given practically no notice. Employees are left without jobs just before Christmas, and parents had to pick up children from their weeping carers and face the prospect of having no childcare.
Companies do sometimes have to close - but it shouldn't be done like this.
Local and national government need to think how to prevent staff and families being left in such a terrible situation in future as economic conditions worsen.
