Council buys places from private chain

Nursery chain Leapfrog has struck a deal with a local authority to buy in places in one of the group's existing settings. In his keynote speech to the Laing & Buisson Annual Children's Nurseries Conference in London last week, Andrew Fitzmaurice, chief executive of Nord Anglia, which owns Leapfrog, said that direct procurement of places was the solution to spare occupancy in private and voluntary sector nurseries and would be 'a win-win solution' if they were deemed children's centres.