Cuts threaten all Birmingham council's nurseries

Birmingham City Council's 23 stand-alone community day nurseries are most at risk, with more than 200 nursery staff facing redundancy.

The council plans to move its daycare services from these nurseries into children's centres.

Public sector union Unison said the plan has the potential to close all of the city's council-run nurseries and could result in redundancies for all 214 nursery staff working in maintained settings.

The council has told trade unions that it plans to cut the early years budget for nurseries and children's centres from April 2010/11 by £1.45m and from 2011/12 by £2.5m.

The council has given a formal notification to unions of potential job losses, at the start of a 90-day consultation process.

The current budget for early years is £8.7m. There are 23 community day nurseries - six based at children's centres - providing 868 full-time equivalent childcare places.

Under a council-wide review, up to 1,400 jobs could go from across the children, young people and families department, with more than 708 jobs in youth services earmarked for redundancy, including the Connexions service and youth offending services.

Child protection services, rated by Ofsted as inadequate last year, will not be affected.

Although the council has not given details of which nurseries could be closed, it has said it is considering how alternative provision for full daycare services could be offered.

In the business case put for the plans, the council is calling for a rationalisation of childcare places in children's centres and nurseries by integrating services and bringing in more childminders.

Support would be individually tailored for families' needs, with daycare purchased from external providers.

The council would put daycare and family services at the city's 75 children's centres out to tender to PVI providers.

Roger Mckenzie, regional secretary of Unison for the West Midlands, said, 'We're calling on the council to come clean about these cuts. We're opposed to the privatisation of these nurseries and we're calling on the people of Birmingham to join us in our campaign to oppose what the city council's planning to do.'

Commenting on nursery provision, a Birmingham city council spokesman said, 'No decision has been made on jobs at this stage. A 90-day consultation period with trade unions has just started. Consultation will focus on how children's needs can be met in different ways, including greater emphasis on early intervention to support families and looking at different settings and ways of providing day care services. The consultation process is in its early stages so it is not possible to provide more detail at this point.'

He added, 'The city is taking a structured and strategic review through our workforce planning to respond to our current financial pressures. Through this planning framework we'll review and look to mitigate job losses where we can. We have got a framework to control the financial situation the city council faces.'