Although we were planning a phased restart from early June, this has now been suspended following guidance for Early Years settings received from Bristol City Council last Friday. As the Early Years operating guidance was very delayed, BCC don’t want settings to open without being fully compliant with the new requirements. These requirements were finally outlined by the government on Sunday, but many key questions remain unanswered and all areas will take a while to work through as they have not taken on board the feedback and guidance from the sector. Many of the new requirements are physically impossible for a setting of our size and even if we had the space, would need additional staffing that is not available and is not in any way covered by either existing funding or private fees. No additional support is being provided to allow delivery of the new requirements and as before, we cannot bankrupt the Centre just to be compliant with complex new reopening requirements, some of which would require normal staffing levels to triple.
The EY guidance also contains various requirements for new PPE (that we don’t have and currently have no reliable way of ordering), staff training (that will need to be developed and delivered), changes to the physical environment (that we’re still waiting for info on) and various other new processes and protocols.
As such, any additional provision must remain on hold until we can digest the guidance, draw up a list of problems/questions and then wait for BCC to come back to us with the answers. It is extremely unlikely that these actions can all be completed by next week, but we will keep you updated as the situation develops. We thank you for your ongoing patience.