Buttercups Nursery

Dear reader,

I am writing to inform you of the outcome of the University Hospital of North Staffordshire Executive's decision regarding the proposals to close the Buttercups Nursery. It is with great sadness and regret that I can confirm the decision is to close Buttercups Nursery. The nursery has been a part of the Trust for 40 years and many of our staff and the local community will rightly have fond memories of it.

Following the receipt of a petition, and as promised at the Public Board meeting on Friday 29 October, the Board gave assurances that the Trust would seriously consider any ideas and proposals that could keep the nursery open. These proposals, which aimed to demonstrate alternative funding models to remove the burden of the nursery's annual subsidy of 225,000 pounds, were received on Wednesday 10 November.

Since receipt of these proposals, the Trust has dedicated a team of five senior staff, including senior managers and finance professionals, to comprehensively evaluate this information. As part of this the Trust incorporated additional information gained through discussions with the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust (a contact provided by parents), to consider their nursery's operational and financial structures.

The three key options that were analysed and compared in a comprehensive detailed financial appraisal were:

1. To close the Buttercups Nursery on Tuesday 4 January 2011.

2. To incorporate all the suggestions as made by the parents to produce a financial model to continue the nursery service to April 2012

3. To demonstrate the 'do nothing' option (i.e. continue to operate the nursery as is until April 2012)

The UHNS Executive concluded that option's two and three did not provide a short or medium term (to April 2012) financially viable solution.

I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge our appreciation for all the support and efforts of the parents of children at Buttercups for working with us to explore possibilities to keep the nursery open. Although the parents group believed that the ideas submitted could keep Buttercups Nursery open, on full evaluation these do not represent sustainable financial solutions.

The Trust is aware that the parents' group would like more time to explore these options. However, the Trust has a duty of responsibility to the 22 remaining members of staff employed at the nursery to complete the appraisal of the options in a reasonable length of time. We will now turn our full attention to supporting the nursery staff and we will do our utmost, and have every confidence, that staff redundancies will be kept to a minimum.

I would like to also take this opportunity to thank our nursery staff for their professionalism through what has been a very difficult period. We have communicated this decision to the nursery staff at a meeting this evening, and we have simultaneously sent out this letter to all parents by email, so that everyone concerned is communicated this difficult decision in a timely and appropriate way.

For many years the Trust has subsidised the nursery, but the introduction of a revised NHS pay scale over the last five years has increased the level of subsidy to an unsustainable amount. This, combined with the increased pressure on funding available in North Staffordshire's health economy for high quality clinical services, has led the Trust to make a number of difficult decisions.

University Hospital of North Staffordshire's number one priority is to provide the highest standard of care for patients. While we have endeavoured over the last 40 years to provide a nursery our staff could be proud of, we are now in the position where we have to put our patients first.

Yours sincerely,

Chris Calkin

Deputy Chief Executive