We have had a very difficult few months. In September the Early Years Development & Childcare Partnership (EYDCP) at Monmouthshire County Council decided to remove our early years funding status, so we have not been able to offer free places to the children the term following their third birthday. This has meant that parents had no choice but to reluctantly take their three year old to the local education authority school nursery. This has reduced our numbers on register and we are struggling now to continue. We are still able to take eligible Flying Start children the term after their second birthday and any 2 to five year old child can attend and pay our session fee of £7.50. We have available places now, call in to Bridges any morning or ring 07901722687.

We have contacted the relevant authorities to put our case forward but to no avail. Parents and Carers are continuing to do the same as they feel their choice of setting is being denied to them. We will remain hopeful that we will be considered again in the near future.

In the mean time we are remaining positive here at Bridges and hope to be able to start a one hour exercise session for the 2 to 5 year old’s focusing on movement, mime and music. We have applied for funding from the Welsh sports council community chest and hope to hear very soon if we have been successful, we will open for one afternoon a week to start with and if the demand is there we may be able to increase this, we will name the sessions “Toddlers Twist and Twirl”. We may also run afternoon  Christmas craft sessions for the 2 to 5 year olds leading up to Christmas probably starting in December if there is enough demand.

Our plans to relocate to a modular building at Single Court business park have not proved successful. The planning application submitted to Monmouthshire county council in February has asked for a full flood risk assessment, this report would cost nearly £4000.00 with no guarantee that planning permission would be granted, we could not commit to such a large sum and we have had to put the plan on  hold.  When management and trustees at Bridges heard of this situation they came to our rescue AGAIN!!  Bridges have offered to apply for lottery funding to build an extension to the building and accommodate our nursery. We will be part of the steering group and have had two meetings already with trustees and staff. The application to the Big lottery will be submitted within the next six months and, if successful, the building should be ready in two years or sooner. There will be a lot of hard work in that time to raise as much additional funds as possible so fundraising is still a major task, if anyone feels they can offer any help please let us know, we will still have the nursery to sustain here at bridges using the present facilities.  We would like to thank everyone who has been so supportive to us so far and hope that you will still feel able to continue your support in the future.

Apologies for the delay in posting this update, red tape, meetings and running a nursery have taken up all our time lately!!

The fundraising event with Monmouth Firefighters and McValeting Car Cleaning raised £400.00, and the quiz night at the Green Dragon raised £720.00, we are so grateful for all their hard work in supporting and organising these fundraising events for us to achieve our new nursery. The children completed a sponsored Sun Flower Collage in June, this is an annual event and this year we raised £500.00, many thanks to everyone who supported them, the finished pictures were put on display in the gallery at Bridges and received a great many compliments.

In June we were told by Monmouthshire Early Years Development and Childcare Partnership that as from September 2011 they would no longer fund children to attend our nursery the term after their third birthday as we did not meet the curriculum of the Welsh Foundation Phase offering the children free access to an outside area. We have now established an outside play area between the two rooms that we use at Bridges and are hopeful this decision can be changed, it will be inspected in August and put to a meeting of the EYDCP in September.

In July we were told that we had won the title of “U.K. Best Loved Nursery” by the magazine Practical Parenting & Pregnancy, a parent, Nikki Hawkins, who’s son Adam attends our nursery nominated us and we won first prize!! We are all so proud to be given this title and it has boosted our morale, we had taken a few knock backs from the authorities before this but we are even more determined now to see our project through successfully. Along with the title came a cheque for £500.00 and £1000.00 of Fisher Price toys!!

We have also been invited by Cllr. Gerry Bright, Mayor of Monmouth, to be one of his chosen charities for his year in office. We will share fundraising events with The Royal British Legion and The St.David’s Hospice Foundation. The first event was an evening at Bridges Community Centre with the rock and roll band “Shoobop”, this was a great evening enjoyed by all. We would like to thank everyone for their support shown to the three charities, we will keep you updated with the next events.

Our shopping  evening on the 1st. April was not as well supported as we had hoped for, we have decided to ask parents what fund raising events they think may be better supported for the future.We did have a very successful event on Saturday 9th. April with the help of the Monmouth Fire fighters and McValeting car cleaning, we were invited to join a car cleaning day at the  Monmouth fire station and share the proceeds with the firefighters benevolent fund. We are so grateful to the Monmouth fire fighters helping to support us in this way, we cannot thank them enough, we have looked after many of their children over the years and one or two of the firefighters themselves!! when they were younger.

We also had another pick up from Bag4Sport on Tuesday 12th. April, thank you to everyone for supplying us with all the donations for this, so far we have raised over £400.00 from the collections. Our planning application has hit a snag with Monmouthshire County Council insisting we have to supply them with a Flood Risk Assessment report, the cost of this is £2,886.00, the risk of flooding is a 1 in 1000 year chance so at the moment we are making sure this report is absolutely necessary. We will keep you posted of our progress. We will be increasing our sessions at Bridges for the summer term, if we have to stay that long, we have increased the number of children on register so need more sessions, hopefully the new nursery will be ready soon and we can continue with our plans of sessional and full day care. The next fund raising event is kindly being supported by the Green Dragon in Monmouth when we will be holding a quiz night with an auction and raffle, Sunday the 29th. May is the date for your diary, we will give more information on prizes etc. nearer the date.

This is the start of our new look web site, so we feel we should let you know the reasons for our need to fund raise, in  case you don’t know.
We had been renting premises for our pre school nursery from the council for the last 14 years. In July this year we were told that they could get more rent for the building that we occupied and as we were not able to offer this new rent we had no alternative but to leave.
A local business man heard about our problem and offered a plot of land where we could site a modular building.

That, in a nutshell, is why we are raising funds, we are in temporary accommodation at the moment at The Bridges Community Centre in Monmouth.
We have contacted Portakabin who can supply us with a building but we have to find at least £7,000 for them to assemble it on the site and then we have to equip the building with toilets, kitchen, office, staff room and storage room and secure the outside area and equip that.

A lot to achieve you may think but we have been offered help from The Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers and British Gas, and of course we are applying for grants and fund raising.

We think that should put everyone in the picture so far.
So now to our best fund raiser yet, last week local band The Crew gave a superb performance for us and everyone who came along had a great time dancing and listening to their excellent roll n roll music (photo’s coming soon),  we have had lots of requests for another night of the same!!

Thank you to everyone for supporting us and to those who gave raffle prizes.
Another fund raiser that we have arranged is collecting clothes, paired shoes, bed linen, bags, caps and soft toys which are collected from us and we are payed for the items by the kilo. Our next collection is 06.12.10.
Please phone 07901722687 if you can donate any items. We will be arranging more events soon to help in our quest to relocate our nursery.