OUTSTANDING NURSERIES GIVEN A ONE YEAR REPRIEVE

At a meeting held last night, Paul Dennett the City Mayor of Salford announced that the five outstanding nurseries currently under threat due to changes in allowed funding are set to be given a 12-month reprieve. A move which will come as a welcome albeit temporary relief for hundreds of workers and parents who are reliant on them for work and child care.

This means that the nurseries will now remain open until at least September 2019 after original plans would have seen them closed by September of this year, the additional 12 month extension is welcomed by all and gives more breathing room for both the council and campaigners to come up with a more viable plan, however, there was a little confusion at the meeting as to the reasons why consultation needs to be started so early when at this time the council is awaiting a response from the government to its application for flexible funding.

One more sigh of relief is that the Mayor insists that the consultation will NOT have closure as an option.

In a post made to the campaign groups facebook page, as well as other groups, Unison secretary Stephen North, said:

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We are relieved that the Mayor has confirmed the status of the nurseries for the next 12 months and that he has agreed to put another £1.5m of Council money into them for that period.

However, the majority present were confused that a consultation on the future beyond September 2019 will commence as early as next week. We had a long debate (nearly two hours) on this. The view of the majority in the room (myself included) was that a delay in any changes meant that any consultation could commence either later this year or early next year if we did not receive additional Government funding and that any consultation at this point would only confuse matters when we should be focussed on campaigning.

We will continue to make our views known about the consultation, but at the same time, it should not be missed that the nurseries will stay open for at least another 12 months as Council nurseries. That means parents and workers can have security for at least another 12 months and should hopefully no longer see the need to look for other jobs or place their children in other settings.

We still need to demand the money from Government as if we secure it before September 2019 then we can keep these nurseries open as Council nurseries for the longer term. That is why the march and rally need to be as big as they possibly can be on Saturday.

 

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It is vitally important that people still attend the rally which is to be held this Saturday 24th March, members of the public are urged to attend and meet at 11am at Victoria Park with a march to the Civic Centre and a Rally later on.

Another local media article from the Salford Star is available on this link: http://salfordstar.com/article.asp?id=4414