The neighbourhood nurseries scheme aims to set up 900 50-place nurseries by 2004. When former education and employment secretary David Blunkett announced the scheme in December 2000 he said it would create 45,000 childcare places in around 900 new nurseries in deprived areas, with the first due to open before the end of 2001.
Initially, the major nursery chains expressed enthusiasm for the idea. Jigsaw, the third largest, said that it hoped to set up 50 new nurseries under the scheme. However, it has not yet opened any.
Development director Jane James said' this week, 'Jigsaw has been heavily involved with the DfEE and then DfEE in helping support the neighbourhood nurseries initiative. We are still in negotiations and working collaboratively.
'We are very much looking forward to some positive outcome to the months of work we have put into trying to set this up and we have worked very fruitfully with the Portsmouth partnership. The DfEE has provided us with a lead officer, a neighbourhood nursery advisor who is working with us.'
Mike Thompson, managing director of Child Base, said he did not think the neighbourhood nurseries formula was sustainable because funding was only available for new settings for three years. 'There's no point in providing funding on a three-year basis because at the end, the nurseries will have to charge a certain rate to remain open.'
Leapfrog, the second largest group, has also stayed out of the scheme but will continue to look at it. Managing director Sue Husbands said Leapfrog was exploring other ways of 'putting something back' into local communities.
The National Day Nurseries Association is setting up nine neighbourhood nurseries which will serve as regional resource centres but will not be run with a view to making a profit Chief executive Rosemary Murphy said, 'These will be exemplar centres in disadvantaged areas and we will be applying for Early Excellence status.'
She said the DfEE would face problems rethinking the scheme, because the money was flowing through early years development and childcare partnerships and was subject to local authority procedures and protocols. The NDNA had employed a member of staff to submit bids for its neighbourhood nurseries which were having to be submitted separately all over the country.
'What everybody failed to realise is that local authorities have rules and regulations about how bidding processes are handled,' she said. 'I also think there might have been a misconception that the chains would want to be involved, but that wasn't actually viable in the way it's been set up.'
A spokesman for the Preschool Learning Alliance said, 'At present we are having to negotiate with each local authority in turn, so the process is taking longer than we initially anticipated. However, we remain firmly committed to the project, and while we had hoped to get around 30 projects off the ground in the first year it now looks less likely we will reach this target.'
A spokesman for the DfEE said that partnerships had already created the first 'neighbourhood nursery places' - subsidised places in existing nurseries serving children from disadvantaged areas. The DfEE expected the first new neighbourhood nurseries to open shortly.
