When the first issue of our Nursery Chains supplement was published in November 1998, its directory contained around 70 groups. Now, just two-and-a-half years later, there are 160 chains listed in the new issue. For the first time we have compiled a league table, ranking the groups according to the number of registered places they offer. Most of our Top 20 have very ambitious plans for further expansion. Individual nurseries too are getting bigger, with some settings registered for more than 200 places. And with the Government's National Childcare Strategy aiming to provide 1.6 million places by 2004 (presuming the election yields the expected result today), there should be no let-up in growth yet.
When the first issue of our Nursery Chains supplement was published in November 1998, its directory contained around 70 groups. Now, just two-and-a-half years later, there are 160 chains listed in the new issue. For the first time we have compiled a league table, ranking the groups according to the number of registered places they offer. Most of our Top 20 have very ambitious plans for further expansion.
Individual nurseries too are getting bigger, with some settings registered for more than 200 places. And with the Government's National Childcare Strategy aiming to provide 1.6 million places by 2004 (presuming the election yields the expected result today), there should be no let-up in growth yet.
Impressive though the figures are for the nursery chains, however, they still only supply around 10 per cent of the total number of nursery places. There is still plenty of room for high-quality independent operators to offer a service needed by parents and children.
And problems such as the recruitment crisis will not be easy to solve for anyone involved in nursery provision - big or small, chain or stand-alone.