Saturday 30 January 2010

Edinburgh Evening News - Councillors Need To Take Note!



Please take a look at today's Edinburgh Evening News for coverage of the campaign's latest way of attracting the councillors' attention. We're working on persuading the councillors to ringfence the £130,000 Edinburgh Leisure say they need to subsidise the creches - and focussed on this by handing out "Bank of Hope" notes worth just that much to all of the councillors on Friday.

Let's keep hoping!

Thursday 28 January 2010

Full City of Edinburgh Council Meeting - Questions and Answers about Crèches

Today there is a full meeting of City of Edinburgh Council. These are the details of questions and answers put to the Council about the Edinburgh Leisure Crèches.

If there are any further updates from this meeting, we'll be sure to let you know!

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Councillor Gordon Buchan
Scottish Conservative Councillor for Fountainbridge / Craiglockhart Ward

QUESTION NO 3
By Councillor Buchan to be answered by the Convener of the Culture and Leisure Committee at a meeting of the Council on 28 January 2010

Question (1)
Please advise in detail on the discussions held between the City Council, Edinburgh Leisure, Save our Crèches and third parties on examining ways to provide suitable crèche facilities at Ainslie Park, Gracemount, Portobello and Drumbrae sports centres.

Answer (1)
Edinburgh Leisure wrote to 97 nursery providers to alert them to the potential opportunity to operate a crèche service from within the above four Edinburgh Leisure facilities. In addition to this, an advert was placed in the Scotsman inviting expressions of interest.

Edinburgh Leisure has received 10 responses to these invitations and eight providers have requested further information and a meeting with Edinburgh Leisure.

To date, six meetings have been held with those who had expressed an interest. No formal interest has been noted in providing alternative crèche provision as of yet. Further meetings with potential providers are anticipated. Edinburgh Leisure has kept Council officers and the Convener of Culture and Leisure up to date with progress.

A meeting also took place with representatives of the crèche users [Save our Crèches] on Tuesday 19 January 2010 at which Edinburgh Leisure provided an update on progress in securing alternative service providers.

Question (2)
Please advise on the likelihood of crèche facilities remaining in operation for the next two financial years.

Answer (2)
Edinburgh Leisure has advised that there is no likelihood of crèche services presently provided by them remaining operational beyond March 2010. Discussions with third parties are ongoing.

Wednesday 27 January 2010

Latest News - Edinburgh Leisure Explore Options

Following on from our last post about the meeting between Save Our Crèches and Edinburgh Leisure, we've had some more news from Ken Harvey of EL.

Save Our Crèches, and some local councillors, asked in the meeting if EL had explored the possibility of working with Childcare Connections to continue the crèche service, specifically at Gracemount. Since then, EL and Childcare Connections have met and discussed this idea.

Childcare Connections exist to provide after school and school holiday care for children in the south of Edinburgh, and the external funding they receive subsidises this. They do provide "one-off" crèche services for events, but don't receive any subsidy for crèches and as a result they need to charge enough for crèche services to cover their costs. Given that all of the crèches are subsidised by EL at the moment, neither EL nor CC could find any way to run the EL crèches without some subsidy, so it would seem that this idea isn't going to work.

Discussions with North Edinburgh Childcare and SmileChildcare have had similar outcomes.

Not great news at the moment, but pleased to see signs of action!

Sunday 24 January 2010

Meeting with Edinburgh Leisure 19 January 2010 - Our Notes

Last Tuesday, 19 January, a group of us from the campaign had the chance to meet with Ken Harvey and Neil Brown from Edinburgh Leisure.

You can see our notes from the meeting here, together with figures that they provided later.

Let us know what you think...

Sunday 17 January 2010

FINAL PUSH TO SAVE OUR CRECHES


Councillors decide in the next few days if they'll follow up on their words of support for our campaign (in the motion passed unanimously on 17th Dec 2009), by ringfencing £130,000 in their grant to Edinburgh Leisure to secure our crèche provision.


Please contact your councillors one last time to urge them to ring fence this cash.

We've made a video for councillors and everyone else to see. It's called 50 reasons... and you can watch it here. Please take a look and forward to others.


We meet Edinburgh Leisure on Tuesday to argue our case - watch this space for updates.

Friday 15 January 2010

Decision Time Approaching - Please Act!

It's coming up to final decision time on the future of Edinburgh Leisure's crèches.

We have a meeting scheduled for this coming Tuesday (19th Jan) near Ainslie Park at 10.30am – it's our chance to put our case to Edinburgh Leisure directly - please, if you can come and lend support in any way that'd be fantastic - no need to speak or anything if you don't want to, but the more of us there the better to show how keen we are to keep the 4 crèches open if at all possible. If you can come, please email us using the link here by Monday 18 Jan midday.

(We can then give you further details about where to go).

If you can't come to the meeting above please can you pop in and see your councillor to make one final plea for them to vote for £130 000 ring-fenced in the Edinburgh Leisure budget to save the crèches. (Councillors decide how much cash to give EL and can say if any of it is to be ring fenced for specific use).

If you can't do either of the above please, please can you email the following councillors, who are members of the Council’s Culture and Leisure Committee.

deidre.brock@edinburgh.gov.uk;
paulgodzik@edinburgh.gov.uk;
CharlesDundas@edinburgh.gov.uk;
alisonjohnstone@edinburgh.gov.uk;
gordonbuchan@edinburgh.gov.uk;
louiselang@edinburgh.gov.uk;
rickyhenderson@edinburgh.gov.uk;
elaineaitken@edinburgh.gov.uk;
conor.snowden@edinburgh.gov.uk;
marjoriethomas@edinburgh.gov.uk;
michaelbridgman@edinburgh.gov.uk;
ronaldcarins@edinburgh.gov.uk;
normahart@edinburgh.gov.uk

You can write about why you want the crèches saved, or you can just personalise the draft email below which should only take 1 minute of your time.

Many, many thanks for your help in this final push.

Draft email
Dear (insert councillor's name)

My name is (add your name) and I use (add your crèche and any other details) crèche which is threatened with closure. I urge you to vote for £130 000 to be ring fenced for Edinburgh Leisure crèches in the forthcoming Edinburgh Council budget. The council was unanimous in supporting our motion to save the crèches at the last full council meeting on 17th December, 2009. Thanks again for your vote.

Please can you follow up your words with actions and ensure these important services are saved so that Edinburgh's parents and carers are not discriminated against through lack of access to exercise facilities.

Yours (add your name again here)
PS For more information please look up our website http://saveourcreche.blogspot.com/

Monday 11 January 2010

Let's Make Some Noise!

Hello all -

After a festive break we're back on the campaign trail again - hope everyone had a good holiday and is ready to make some noise about crèche closures.

So far this year our group
  1. has sent every one of the City of Edinburgh councillors a letter thanking them for supporting our motion in December - and asking them to follow through with that support,
  2. are meeting with Edinburgh Leisure representatives as soon as we can, and
  3. are organising a video to remind councillors of the need to rework budgets.

What are you doing? We'd love to know. So post on Facebook, send us an email or comment here. We'd also like feedback on what's been done so far and ideas, if you have any, of what we should all be doing.

But we need to make more noise. So everyone who can possibly can, please make it a New Year's resolution to do something for the campaign now.

You can

  • follow up on any questions with your councillors,
  • write to Edinburgh Leisure,
  • look at previous blogs for inspiration,
  • be part of our video.

Let's keep the noise going!

Quality Childcare - Worth fighting For