The children’s charity Coram has defended a decision to more than double the rent for a nursery it helped create in north London, despite the nursery’s claims that it may now be forced to close.
The Thomas Coram nursery school, an early years centre for children aged two to five in Camden, north London, will face a rent rise from £115,000 to more than £240,000 a year over a three-year period.
Barbara Riddell, one of the nursery’s governors, told Third Sector that the nursery has also been advised that its space will be reduced by half within the same timeframe, which she said would force it to offer early years provision to 50 fewer children per year.
Riddell said the nursery was “shocked and saddened in equal measure” that the pioneering and honourable charity that set up the nursery – whose intake includes children with special educational needs and disabilities – should end up being the architect of its removal from its home.
“We cannot comprehend how the organisation that first established the nursery on the site could effectively become the architect of our closure,” she said. “We simply cannot afford rent at this level.”
She added that Coram had refused to meet the nursery to discuss the matter since early 2022.
But a spokesperson for Coram said the nursery’s rent had not been increased since 2016, despite the profound pressures of the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis placing growing demands on the charity.
The spokesperson said Coram had proposed phasing the rent rise over three years rather than an immediate increase and that the amount the charity would be paying by August 2025 was in line with the rent other charities on the Coram campus pay and “well below” the market rate.
“Coram greatly values the Thomas Coram Nursery School and wants nothing more than for it to continue to serve local children on a fair and equitable basis with all the other children and charities who use our campus,” the spokesperson said.
They said the charity had “met repeatedly” the nursery’s chair of governors and that use of the nursery’s space was still being considered, with no changes having been agreed for the current year.
Coram also said the future and funding of the nursery was a matter for Camden Council, which it accused of leaving the nursery “in limbo” by not signing an agreement Coram said it made with the charity in 2021 to extend the nursery’s lease.
But a spokeswoman for Camden Council told Third Sector it was the charity rather than the local authority that set the nursery’s rent and that the reason for the delayed signing of the agreement was due to the nursery’s assertion that the conditions set out in the new lease would present challenges to its viability.
“The nursery have been really clear with us that higher rent and, critically, a reduction in bespoke childcare space being proposed will severely threaten their future,” she said in a statement.
In an email seen by Third Sector, the Thomas Coram Nursery School urged friends and former colleagues to write to the press, to Coram and to the leader of Camden Council seeking support.
“Our only hope of being able to remain in our home is if the Coram trustees reverse sharply and recognise our value and our right to remain on terms that allow us to survive,” it read.
Commenting on the matter on Twitter, Jonathan Simpson, a Labour Party councillor in Camden, said: “Coram’s Nursery in King’s Cross was one of the very first Sure Start centres nationally and has given countless children the best start in life.
“It seems that Coram, a charity that campaigns for children’s rights, wants the nursery gone. Astonishing.”