Hard-pressed parents in Glasgow are shouldering huge hikes in nursery fees to help plug a £20 million funding gap
Maureen McKenna, Education Director, has admitted the decision was taken to generate income to meet the budget shortfall.
Parents are furious at the increase of more than 50 per cent from £2.54 per hour to £4 an hour, with a further rise to £5 in the pipeline.
Ms McKenna, who has been in charge of education in the city for more than 10 years, said the decision was related to council budget cuts.
READ MORE: Nurseries turn to great outdoors to help solve free places squeeze
An email issued in her name stated: “I can advise that the income to be generated from the fee increase is being used to contribute towards meeting the funding gap in the council’s budget for financial year 2018/19.
“An income generation option has been approved by council rather than alternative measures such as reduction to service delivery.
“Fees in nurseries are already heavily subsidised and the financial climate, regrettably, means that this is no longer sustainable.”
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon pressed on SNP-run Glasgow City Council hiking childcare fees
The increase in nursery fees will bring in an extra £1.25m for the council in this financial year.
The city-wide 3% council tax increase will bring in £6.3m.
The council faced a budget shortfall of £20m.
Johann Lamont, Glasgow Labour MSP, has been dealing with constituents who have seen their fees increased by hundreds of pounds a month.
She said: “The SNP has used every excuse in the book to explain this unjust and unfair increase in childcare fees.
“We now know beyond doubt that the real reason is the council need to fill a funding gap caused by years of cuts from the SNP government in Edinburgh.
“Instead of telling these families to pay more, SNP councillors should be demanding their colleagues in Holyrood give the city the funding it needs.
“It is completely improper for SNP councillors to pass the buck to thousands of families in our city.”
READ MORE: Fight for extra school support 'incredibly daunting'
A spokeswoman for Glasgow City Council said: “The increase in nursery fees was part of the council budget announced in February and will bring our fees in line with partner provision as we all work towards 1140 hours.
“We are offering more and more free hours to working families who are able to access some of the highest quality provision in early learning and childcare.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel