While I agree with Donna Barlow's comments in her letter ('Beggaring belief', 25 October) that nursery nurses are paid well below their value, I am annoyed with her suggestion that nursery owners are creaming off vast profits at the workers' expense.
Staff pay accounts for more than 60 per cent of our income. Then there are the rent, rates, electricity and insurance costs and all the other expenses too numerous to mention. At the end, our return for the investment we put into the business is very small. Some months I take home less than our top earner and my daughter takes nothing.
Ms Barlow would be better advised to direct her comments at Government officials who could do a lot more to help private day nurseries increase the number of their employees by implementing rate relief, letting us register for VAT so that we can recover the tax paid on our purchases, and increase the childcare payments available on the Working Families Tax Credit.
I would love to be able to pay our staff their true value. Unfortunately this would mean increasing our fees to a level that most parents could not afford. This would lead to children being taken out of the nursery, and jobs being lost.
Clifford Milton, Flying Start Nursery, Barnstable, North Devon
