Express & Echo (City & East Devon Edition)
Caught up in red tape to be registered as a nursery
AS you may have heard, the Government has transformed childcare in this country by offering lots more funding to parents of our nation’s toddlers. And I mean lots more funding.
Amazing, hey? It is almost like the Conservatives know they won’t actually have to worry about paying for it. The bill is estimated to be about £8 billion a year, roughly double what early years childcare cost the taxpayer last year.
Now, given that I now run not one but two childcare settings, I have thoughts about all this. Many thoughts. The first is that I am sure it is, broadly speaking, a good idea. If politicians are serious about improving productivity in this country, then helping parents back into work is one of the best ways to go about it. Mums and dads of young children are, generally speaking, hard workers and highly motivated. More likely to contribute to the economy than retirees and the longterm sick, the other groups on the Government’s hitlist.
So I have no problem with additional funding for childcare. I even agree with Rishi Sunak, in fact, that the additional tax revenue generated by parents working more might well cover the (ahem) additional £4bn it will cost. Let’s hope so anyway.
As various politicians and experts have pointed out over the past few weeks, this massive expansion in childcare funding will, surely, require a massive expansion in childcare places. Indeed, the think tank Nesta says we need 27,500 more nursery workers to fulfil the Government’s promised childcare places.
With this in mind, here on our farm in the Westcountry, I set about trying to expand my little childcare business to take a few more children. Not dozens. Just, say, three or four more per day. Enough to justify taking on a new member of staff. So, on December 5, I applied to Ofsted to change my registration from childminders working together to become a proper nursery.
I filled in three forms, each helpfully labelled with catchily memorable names (EYO, EY2 and EYS; not confusing at all). I then sat back and waited, thinking: “Well, even allowing for British bureaucracy, we will surely be given the go-ahead by Easter.”
You will no doubt be utterly astonished to hear that Easter came and went and still we were not registered as a day nursery. Instead, I was caught in a death spiral of paperwork that is only partially resolved now. There were, alas, three things wrong with my forms. One was that my email address didn’t have my name in it. It’s the name of my house instead – yes I know, stupid: but there we are. This caused the Ofsted powers-that-be (well, more like their junior clerical staff) great consternation. “You’re using a generic email,” they cried. Three times Ofsted sent the form back, demanding that I change my email address. I spent a happy hour or so on hold each time to explain and eventually persuaded Georgia, or Joe, or Farouk, that this was my personal email and there was no danger anyone else would read their precious communications.
Then Georgia, Joe and Farouk promptly forgot all about it. Until the next graduate trainee at Ofsted spotted the “issue” and sent it back to me again.
The other thing that preoccupied them greatly (indeed, Georgia told me she, Joe, Farouk and others had been looking at Cuckoo Down Farm on Google Maps all morning) was this: How could I have a domestic address but be claiming the nursery would be in a non-domestic building? Reader, how many times did I have to explain that a farm consists of a farmhouse (domestic) and various agricultural buildings (non domestic), one of which would be our childcare setting?
To the bitter end, the Ofsted staffers refused to get their heads around it. So I had to invent a brand-new address, “The Cabin, Cuckoo Down Farm,” otherwise they would not be able to accept the application. I’m sure this won’t cause me any problems in the future with Royal Mail, the taxman or the local council, will it?
The final issue was that our nursery manager had had the temerity to move house about two years ago. Farouk and friends had a field day with this: “Your address is not known to Ofsted” they complained, repeatedly, to her. “We cannot accept it.”
In the end, our forms were sent back to us for amendments seven times in four months. It was only on Friday last week, after our manager had screamed at them down the phone about her audacious address change and I had sobbed on the mobile to poor Joe, that a decision was made. Ofsted is coming to see us on May 31 to assess our suitability as a day nursery.
Wish me luck. Something tells me I’m going to need it.