NDNA have been supporting members with specific issues or concerns about school-based nursery (SBN) decisions.
The Department for Education has now confirmed the two routes for making complaints about SBN decisions in your area.
The two main points to consider are:
- Local authorities are responsible for the information about demand for places in their areas and should have decided whether to endorse school bids or not based on that data
- DfE were responsible for decisions made on the data provided by schools and local authorities.
Providers should therefore follow the complaint routes below – depending on the nature of the concern about the SBN decision:
| Complain to the Council where: | Complain to DfE |
| Providers do not believe there was any or enough consultation by the local authority | If providers feel that the decision to fund a setting was unfair – based on information provided by LA |
| Providers disagree with the decision of the local authority to support a SBN – please note, that if a SBN was approved a condition of that approval was having the local authority’s support | If they believe a bid by a school shouldn’t have been accepted under DfE’s criteria |
| Providers disagree with the assessment of the level of demand for places | |
| How to complain: | How to complain: |
| Providers should complain to their council’s complaints team. Providers may also want to complain to their local Councillors who are their elected representatives. You can find your Councillor and their contact details here. | Providers should go through the general DfE complaints process and it will get to the relevant team |
Other steps to consider in the complaint
FOI request for information
If a SBN has been approved in your area but you have had no consultation or seen no evidence about demand you can submit a Freedom of Information request to the council directly to ask them for ‘information relating to the need for early education and care places at [insert school name] that was used in support of the application for a School-Based Nursery Capital Grant.’
All councils should have information on their website about how to submit a FOI request. Eg. Kirklees Council.
Existing information about demand in your area
Before the policy was introduced NDNA collected as many Childcare Sufficiency Assessments from local authorities as were available. We have published a library of these and will update them when we are made aware of new assessments. You can access more information about these documents here – https://ndna.org.uk/is-there-more-demand-for-childcare-in-your-area/
Notify schools in your area about your existing provision
As a local provider or a collective of providers, you may want to write to the Governors of local Infant and Primary Schools to let them know about the provision you already have, any capacity that may already exist in your settings and any concerns you may have for your sustainability if more provision was opened locally.
Alternatively, if you have a waiting list and could increase your capacity if you were to work with a local school, you could offer to discuss partnership working on any possibly future SBN. In the first round of SBN funding, around 1 in 10 successful capital projects were for schools working with PVI providers to deliver on their premises.
Get in touch with NDNA
If you are struggling with a school-based nursery, get in touch by contacting our policy team [email protected]