A PRIVATE nursery is due to close at the end of this month, leaving 25 parents with the job of finding alternative childcare.
Tenderlinks Daycare, in Laurel Lane, West Drayton, will shut on June 29. Its owner, Lampard Investments, gave parents and staff a month’s notice on May 29.
Nursery manager Cherry Everest said: “It is just devastating news. We are all really close, so it’s horrible to think that we’ll be going our separate ways.”
The nursery, which has been open since 2007, rents its premises from Longmead Primary School. It was open 51 weeks a year, and 25 children aged between three months and five years currently attend.
One mother, who asked not to be named, takes her two-year-old daughter there three days a week.
“It’s sad that I have to take my daughter out because she has really come on since I started taking her, but I feel for the staff. The girls there are as good as gold,” she said. “They do such an excellent job.”
Farouq Khaki, who co-founded Lampard Investments, said that the creche had been running under capacity for the past year.
“We simply haven’t been getting enough children through the doors. Our three other nurseries – (in Twickenham, Streatham and Norbury – are in highly populated areas and are doing well, and unfortunately the one in West Drayton is not. The decision was not taken lightly but is purely down to that.”
