Housing providers explore nursery partnerships

Published by 24publishing for 24dash.com in Housing and also in Central Government, Communities, Local Government

It was great to hear at a roundtable discussion with housing associations yesterday that two were exploring partnerships with nurseries to support tenants into work.

Childcare costs are rapidly becoming families' single biggest weekly outgoing. For example, a full time nursery place for our two year-old daughter is nearly £700 – on par with the UK’s average rent.

For lone parents, the sums simply don’t add up and provide a disincentive to work.

Moreover, next April sees the introduction of the £500 household benefit cap which is set to affect 56,000 households with nearly half of those in social housing.

Of the 56,000 affected, half are lone parents. However, 16 hours worth of employment will exempt them from the benefit cap.

Thus it’s a no brainer that housing associations and councils should be exploring ways to work with child care providers to make nursery more accessible and affordable, freeing those parents up to move into employment or take on more work.

In the London borough of Lambeth, 80% of the 700 people affected by next year’s benefit cap are single parent households. “That’s where we need to be putting some of our preventative resource,” said councillor Lib Peck earlier this year.

It was great to hear two more landlords express their desires to look into nursery partnerships yesterday.

Lyng Community Association (LCA) – which manages homes on a West Bromwich estate – is looking to invest in the community and neighbourhood rather than acquire more homes.

Chris Withnall (pictured), general manager of Lyng Community Association, said the organisation was looking at acquiring a park on the estate to ensure high levels of management and was also looking at the possibility of running nurseries.

He said: “The board isn’t averse to us acquiring a community asset. In fact, some members of the board would be keen to see us do that – a building from which we could run a crèche or youth club. But anyone who has been involved in community projects knows, it’s very easy to acquire a building, but very easy to lose a heck of a lot of money because the business model overestimates the income and underestimates the costs. Therefore, the board will be cautious about acquiring an asset with which to run social activities they want to sponsor. But there are lots of other people with premises in the neighbourhood from where we could run the activities or sponsor the activities to help the community sustain itself.”

David Willis, chief executive of Wellingborough Homes, said running a nursery had actually featured in a staff brainstorming session. He said: “Primarily our view was that we don’t have the core competencies to run a nursery. That doesn’t mean to say we won’t be thinking of how we can make nursery places more accessible by working in partnership with some of the nursery providers locally or making our tenants aware of the support they can get to help fund child care places.”

Ross Macmillan is deputy editor of 24housing magazine