Removing child from nursery, no notice given

BasilFawlty

Hello,

I've removed my child from nursery. The setting became unsafe, numerous legal breaches regarding lack of management, staff ratios, hygiene and more. Essentially the place is falling apart at the seams, barely any staff left and it follows an ofsted improvement notice.

Ts & Cs require 8 weeks notice. Obviously I'm not leaving my kid there, its dangerous. Although irrelevant I've also reported to ofsted. 

They've replied with acknowledgement of the issues and a 'wish list' of improvement actions. They say they respect my decision to withdraw my kid and hold upcoming payments.

Where do you reckon I stand when they inevitably come for payment in a few weeks. I'm told they're threatening all the other parents with debt collectors who have withdrawn their kids in a hurry.

It's a contractual breach on my part to withdraw my child early, but does the safety of my kid and their undeniable breaches of the law carry any relevance? Do I have a leg to stand on if I tell them to get stuffed?

Hoenir

Legal Contracts are in place to stop people in all sorts of situations stopping another party saying "get stuffed". 

  

Grumpy_chap

BasilFawlty said:

Hello,

I've removed my child from nursery. The setting became unsafe, numerous legal breaches regarding lack of management, staff ratios, hygiene and more. Essentially the place is falling apart at the seams, barely any staff left and it follows an ofsted improvement notice.

Ts & Cs require 8 weeks notice. Obviously I'm not leaving my kid there, its dangerous. Although irrelevant I've also reported to ofsted. 

They've replied with acknowledgement of the issues and a 'wish list' of improvement actions. They say they respect my decision to withdraw my kid and hold upcoming payments.

Where do you reckon I stand when they inevitably come for payment in a few weeks. I'm told they're threatening all the other parents with debt collectors who have withdrawn their kids in a hurry.

It's a contractual breach on my part to withdraw my child early, but does the safety of my kid and their undeniable breaches of the law carry any relevance? Do I have a leg to stand on if I tell them to get stuffed?

Is the withdrawal your first action?
Have you raised previous complaints / concerns?
Presumably, you were satisfied with the provision at the nursery when viewed prior to enrolment.  Changes of the scale you reference would not usually all happen in one step.

mavenmim

Childcare is considered a service under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 in the UK. You can only charge for a service if it is fit for purpose, and delivered with reasonable care and skill. They can't charge excessive termination fees either, and if a term is unfair, you may be able to ignore the term or even cancel your contract without having to pay a cancellation fee. Material breach of contract is a lawful reason to cancel without paying notice. In other words, a consumer can cancel a service if it's not delivered as promised, potentially without paying a fee or notice period. 

So I'd feel fairly confident that they'd be unable to enforce payments for the notice period from anyone who withdraws their child after safety breaches or where the staffing ratio is too low, or where Ofsted have issued an improvement notice.

PHK

Fortunately, if this were to go to a small claims court against you then I think you have two things on your side. 

1) The notice period term would probably be seen as an unfair term in a situation like this. There's an imbalance because they can withdraw service but you can't, yet to continue would carry a great risk of harm to a child. 

2) Judges in small claims court use a reasonableness  test. They would ask if it's reasonable to hold you to a contract when the other party has failed to use reasonable skill and care, and to continue the contract has a risk of harm to a minor. 

tacpot12

The nursery might be in breach of contract. If you have home insurance, check to see if you have legal expenses cover. If you do, call the legal helpline for advice. You are obliged to let your insurer know if you might be sued for non-payment and you want the legal expenses protection to cover you. 

Newbie_John

I think contractually you need to pay.
If the place was unsafe - OFSTED would close it down but they only issued a warning.

Tricky situation as well, as you say they're in the mess they won't have time to go through courts but they could sell the debt to debt collection agencies and the situation could become quite annoying to you.

They may not do any of that - but contractually you accepted 8 weeks notice.

Aylesbury_Duck

Newbie_John said:

I think contractually you need to pay.
If the place was unsafe - OFSTED would close it down but they only issued a warning.

I agree with this.  What you could do is check the contract to see if they've breached it by not having the stated staff ratios in place, for example, but as John says, if there was a serious concern about safety, something more drastic would have happened.

Jenni_D

Newbie_John said:

I think contractually you need to pay.
If the place was unsafe - OFSTED would close it down but they only issued a warning.

Tricky situation as well, as you say they're in the mess they won't have time to go through courts but they could sell the debt to debt collection agencies and the situation could become quite annoying to you.

They may not do any of that - but contractually you accepted 8 weeks notice.

They'd also have to send the debtor a Notice of Allocation of the debt ... if they don't do that then the debt collector has no legal rights whatsoever as the debt is not (legally) theirs to collect.

BasilFawlty

Aylesbury_Duck said:

Newbie_John said:

I think contractually you need to pay.
If the place was unsafe - OFSTED would close it down but they only issued a warning.

I agree with this.  What you could do is check the contract to see if they've breached it by not having the stated staff ratios in place, for example, but as John says, if there was a serious concern about safety, something more drastic would have happened.

The law states 1:3, this was breached

BasilFawlty

Grumpy_chap said:

BasilFawlty said:

Hello,

I've removed my child from nursery. The setting became unsafe, numerous legal breaches regarding lack of management, staff ratios, hygiene and more. Essentially the place is falling apart at the seams, barely any staff left and it follows an ofsted improvement notice.

Ts & Cs require 8 weeks notice. Obviously I'm not leaving my kid there, its dangerous. Although irrelevant I've also reported to ofsted. 

They've replied with acknowledgement of the issues and a 'wish list' of improvement actions. They say they respect my decision to withdraw my kid and hold upcoming payments.

Where do you reckon I stand when they inevitably come for payment in a few weeks. I'm told they're threatening all the other parents with debt collectors who have withdrawn their kids in a hurry.

It's a contractual breach on my part to withdraw my child early, but does the safety of my kid and their undeniable breaches of the law carry any relevance? Do I have a leg to stand on if I tell them to get stuffed?

Is the withdrawal your first action?
Have you raised previous complaints / concerns?
Presumably, you were satisfied with the provision at the nursery when viewed prior to enrolment.  Changes of the scale you reference would not usually all happen in one step.

The changes have all happened quite fast. The nursery was fine. We were a little put off by a few bits but it wasn't enough to panic us. Then the ofsted report came a couple of months ago, within that time almost all the top team were fired or left. They've been relying on cover and it seemed okay, but even that's broken down now.

They were proactive in dealing with concerns but they were empty words it seems. Other parents have removed their children also in the last few weeks. It took a dramatic turn for the worst quite rapidly.