Mary Davies, owner of Aintree Day Nursery, told Nursery World she had to obtain a £10,000 overdraft facility last month in order to pay her staff. She is owed £4,500.
'Five years ago this was not happening, but now, for some people we seem to come somewhere below the cat litter in their list of priorities,' said Ms Davies.
She called on the Government to channel money for childcare direct to providers and rejected the Government's claim that the present system was facilitating parental choice. She said non-payment had become a 'scam' encouraged by the way parents receive tax credits towards the cost of childcare.
Ms Davies stressed she had 'a lot of very good parents', but also had a small minority who secure the nursery's registration number to get tax credits, pay their fees intermittently, run up debts and then disappear.
She said parents would often send a grandparent to the nursery, knowing they would be unlikely to be asked to pay up, while other parents had responded aggressively to requests for fee arrears by making bogus complaints to Ofsted about the nursery's levels of care.
Julie White, manager of Daisy Chain in Walton, said her nursery was owed thousands of pounds and that nurseries were warning each other of debtors via e-mail.
Ms White said, 'Because we are in a deprived area and we were not at full capacity and wanted to get children into the nursery, we would let parents bring the children and wait for tax credits to arrive. Sometimes that would take two or three weeks, and if two children were involved that could be nearly £1,000.
'It's Catch 22 - you don't want to scare them into leaving completely because then you get nothing.'
Alison McKenna, who has run the Rainbow House nursery for 20 years in the city, said she was careful to monitor any debts, and after two or three weeks of non-payment she asks parents to withdraw their children.
She said insisting on weekly instead of monthly payments helped to deter debtors, and warned that bank standing orders may not be the safest way for nurseries to collect fees, as parents could stop them and the setting not notice until it was too late.
Purnima Tanuku, chief executive of the National Day Nurseries Association, said it was a growing issue, with many NDNA members contacting the association's free legal helpline for advice on unpaid fees.
She said, 'While no nursery wants to turn away a child, it is vital that debt does not threaten its survival. NDNA believes supply-side funding and more direct support to bring down the cost of childcare for parents is vital in helping to resolve this situation.'