At a meeting last week to consider revised proposals to re-organise the management of the county's children's centres and make savings of around £20m, Councillor Roy Perry, deputy leader and executive lead member for children's services, announced that all 81 children's centres will remain open, but that many will be merged as 'clusters' and under the management of third-party organisations.
The council has agreed on all the measures set out in its revised proposals, which it adapted in response to 1,200 comments raised during the consultation into the reorganisation of the children's centres, which ended on 15 April. The measures include the removal of three children's centres attached to maintained nursery schools from the merger and cluster deals, clustering 15 children's centres rather than the eight originally suggested, and reducing the maximum cluster size to five centres.
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