Treetops Press Release

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Additional facts

The current premises

Treetops Preschool operates from Glengarth Evening Centre, Station Road, Marple. It is an educational preschool for children from 2 years 9 months to school age. Established for over 20 years, it has never had to advertise and has relied on parent recommendations to fill its registration capacity.

The Glengarth building was historically owned by the Mencap charity. As Mencap is a charity it was happy to charge Treetops a nominal rent of £5,600 per annum including utilities for the 84 sq m playroom, toilets and office. A local businessman (Paul Summers of Summers & Co Chartered Accountants) purchased the Glengarth building from Mencap in September 2008. Upon expiry of the current lease in August 2010, the new landlord wishes to charge a commercial rent of £25k per annum for the facility, committed on a five year lease.

The search for new premises

Commercial premises in central Marple are unaffordable to a charity, and there is a lack of available community premises which presented the Parents’ Action Group with significant barriers when the search first began. All of the local church halls, scout huts, guide huts, and sporting venues were approached. Nowhere in Marple was able to offer 8am-4pm facilities for the exclusive use of Treetops with the necessary CRB compliance, outdoor space and storage facilities. The Action Group was delighted to find a commercial unit on Shepley Lane in Marple, which it felt met the criteria for the provision of permanent premises for Treetops.

The proposed new premises

The premises at Shepley Lane is a large commercial unit offering 2000 square feet of accommodation over a large open plan ground floor area and three office / classrooms to the first floor. Its location offers parking outside the unit. There is also pedestrian access from the large Goyt Mill car park. The landlord agreed to mark out a pedestrian lane on the pavement for pedestrians accessing the setting in this way (a copy of his letter confirming this is available upon request).

Treetops finalised the agreement of acceptable terms with the Shepley Lane premises landlord in March and proceeded to attempt to secure Council funding as soon as possible in order to reassure staff and parents at the earliest opportunity of the continuance of the setting. The new premises needed to open in September 2010. In order to do this, the capital improvement works would need to commence by the start of June 2010 at the latest in order to complete the necessary works in time to make the removals during August 2010.

Preliminary prudent financial forecasts indicated that the new setting would be self-sustaining, generating an annual surplus.

The grant application for the capital sum of £88,700.00 from Stockport Council was submitted on 1st April to fund the necessary adaptations to the proposed premises. This was turned down on 16th April on the grounds of the access arrangements being via a pavement to the front of Wright Hire, which was considered undesirable. The Action Group therefore arranged alternative access via an exclusively pedestrian path to the rear of the unit. The bid was again rejected on the grounds of pollution on the estate. 

[admin]

28th April 2010


Marple residents fight to save local pre-school

Marple residents will continue their tireless battle to save Treetops preschool at the Marple Area Committee meeting at Marple Library on Wednesday 28th April at 6pm. A grant application that would have saved Treetops by funding new premises has been turned down for seemingly unfounded reasons and campaigners plan to question Council executives to understand why.

Parents and relatives have worked into the night with Treetops leaders and local Councillors over the past two months to explore and develop every possible option to save the preschool before it is forced to close its doors for good at the end of the 2010 summer term due to lack of premises. Committee meetings have regularly run until midnight several nights a week, and members have made available vast amounts of time between work and parenting commitments, so strong is their belief that Treetops must be saved.  

Treetops is an exceptional facility, with a fantastic reputation locally, over 20 years’ heritage and a committed staff(including qualified, experienced teachers) providing fantastic care and early years education for the children of over 50 Marple families at any one time.

Dr Jo Black, whose daughter attends Treetops, says of the setting, “Treetops is a fantastic local facility. The staff team is very stable and holds a wealth of experience, and the levels of staffing and amount of input from the qualified teaching staff are second to none. They handle a range of educational and emotional needs with great skill and sensitivity, and put the children's wellbeing and development at the heart of what they do - we parents believe that this is only possible in a 'not for profit' facility.”

Leaders of Treetops, a charitable organisation, first became aware that the facility was under threat in September 2008 when the Glengarth building where it is housed was bought from Mencap by a local businessman. The favourable lease agreed with Mencap will expire in August 2010, after which the current landlord wishes to significantly increase the rent, putting it beyond Treetops’ reach. The future term of lease would also be reduced, meaning that investment in maintaining and improving facilities could not be deemed viable.  

At this stage Stockport Council encouraged the pre-school to put in a bid for investment to help buy the building and were highly optimistic about its chances success. The bid cost over £3,000 and significant amounts of time were given voluntarily by staff and their families to prepare the application. Given the Council’s initial support, the decision to turn it down on the grounds that the level of investment requested was too high and the money would be better spent elsewhere in the borough, was unexpected.

Parents and families got involved in February 2010 when Treetops announced to them that it would be closing. Since then the Parents’ Action Group have been passionately focused on exploring countless options to save the facility. A huge amount of time has been spent seeking potential affordable new premises, exploring in detail the financial and practical viability of the best option at Shepley Lane and formulating the latest grant application. This work was spurred on by more encouragement and assurances about the availability of funds from the local council who visited the premises and gave an initial positive response. Again unexpectedly, this latest bid has been rejected for the seemingly unfounded reason that it is an Industrial Estate, despite the fact the area is surrounded by fields and the canal.       

Time has run out to find alternative new premises in time for the new school year in September 2010. With Peacefield pre-school having closed down and The Dale and All Saints facing premises battles, pre-school care in Marple is seriously under threat. This could affect the ability of parents in the area to continue or return to work.

Throughout the process, Liberal Democrat Councillors Chris Baker and Craig Wright with Andrew Stunell MP have lent great support and advice to the Parents’ Action Group, with Chris Baker sitting on the Committee.

Committee member and local Chartered Accountant Kate Scott, who wrote the business plan and financial forecasts for the latest application, commented “The reasons the council have given for rejecting the bid just don’t seem strong enough, particularly given their initial verbal support of our application and knowledge of the huge amount of time we have all volunteered to the process. We suspect an alternative agenda and are determined to get to the bottom of this at the Marple Area Committee meeting. We haven’t come this far to give up without a fight.”

She continued “We are hugely indebted to our local Liberal Democrat representatives for their hands-on help in negotiating this complicated process. It’s great to see local politics in action”

- Ends -  


See ‘Additional Facts’ appendix.

For further information:
Kate Scott, Committee Member

Tel:             07855 785 450
Email:            kate@scottaccounts.co.uk
Twitter:          @marplepreschool
Facebook group:       Save Our Marple Preschools!


Available on request:

Full business plan
Draft plans for Shepley Lane premises