Redevelopment for former Leeds law firm offices
THE former offices of Leeds law firm Clarion have been purchased by a nursery group.
Twinkles Nurseries, a £4m turnover business, has acquired Oxford Place (the home of Clarion before their move to Elizabeth House) and is investing £300,000 in its redevelopment.
The finished nursery will create 40 jobs when it opens in October, providing 60 nursery places for children aged three months to five years.
Established in 2000, Twinkles Nurseries Group currently employs 130 staff across five settings in West and North Yorkshire.
Plans for two more nursery settings in Ripon and York within the next two years are underway.
Twinkles Nurseries Group managing director, Jill Johnson said, “The supply of city centre private nursery places in Leeds comes nowhere near to meeting the demand and there is a huge deficit in surrounding wards.
“The high-quality childcare provision at our original city centre nursery in Church Walk, Leeds, has made it a huge success with a long waiting list. We have been forced to turn away 10 parents’ enquires each week for months so redeveloping this new Oxford Place site from which to provide our outstanding level of childcare makes perfect sense for us.
“Ensuring we find just the right members of staff for the Oxford Place has also been a key consideration. As with all our nurseries, we are only recruiting highly-qualified and experienced people with a deliberate focus on opportunities for part-time hours for working parents. At Oxford Place all our Early Years practitioners will have NVQ Level 3 or above – something which goes above and beyond Ofsted requirements. Indeed, more than half of the people who we have recruited so far have NVQ 5 or 6, or an Early Years Degree. Helping children have the best start in life is what our nurseries across the county will always be about.”
