{"id":60514,"date":"2026-04-28T11:57:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T11:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/?p=60514"},"modified":"2026-04-28T11:57:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T11:57:15","slug":"parents-fight-back-over-shock-plans-to-close-sheffield-hallam-nursery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/28\/parents-fight-back-over-shock-plans-to-close-sheffield-hallam-nursery\/","title":{"rendered":"Parents fight back over “shock” plans to close Sheffield Hallam Nursery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Campaigning parents have formed a 1500-strong petition after the shock news that their beloved Collegiate Nursery, on Broomgrove Road, is expected to close in just months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nursery is tailored towards university students and staff, although open to the wider public, and ran by Sheffield Hallam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parents were notified on April 13 at 6.30pm of closure plans expected in July and believe staff were only informed ten minutes before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The establishment was previously praised for its expertise in supporting SEND children, with most staff being trained in using makaton, and received an ‘outstanding’ Ofsted rating in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parent George Sharman, 32, said: “As soon as we got the email, I reached out to all the local councillors, the MP, the mayor and Tom Hunt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Our biggest ask to the university would be for them to pause the consultation period and then reconsider. The timeline they’ve given is very short for people to find additional provision, and there’s families which are really going to struggle to find places.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rebecca Elliot, the petition-starter, said: “We ask for the university processes to take in to account long term economic effects, equality impact assessments and social impacts, not just immediate cost savings.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The University and College Union said previously that the university have “a supposed need to make \u00a326.6m of cuts next year.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parents claim they have some of the highest fees in the area, after increased costs for attendees last year , but do not generally provide food, expecting caregivers to provide their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Sharman family added a bittersweet anecdote about their child’s second word being Lisa, the name of a member of staff at Collegiate Nursery. They added their child seemed really happy at the nursery and described the children there like an extension of their infant’s family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Labour and Co-operative Councillor Minesh Parekh, representative of Crookes and Crosspool, said in a Facebook post: “I was really concerned to hear that Sheffield Hallam University is considering closing its nursery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“At a time when the government is trying to make nursery and childcare more available to people, and increasing funding to that end, it’s really disappointing and short-sighted for them to consider closing such an important site.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sheffield Hallam Press Office did not respond to our request to comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are interested in supporting the cause, the petition is available on change.org: https:\/\/www.change.org\/p\/reconsider-the-decision-to-consult-on-the-closure-of-sheffield-hallam-nursery?fbclid=IwY2xjawRQzphleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETBxZVRvM0RpdEh1Wk1oSDVoc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHrSkdsWm9a86SSkyhhjBDwR8p25l-6ys-DjFHRtJA33AeahQ9zOIm6BTSfoP_aem_FeE6qZXy8uMvjaP1qTx8lw<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Campaigning parents have formed a 1500-strong petition after the shock news that their beloved Collegiate Nursery, on Broomgrove Road, is expected to close in just months. The nursery is tailored towards university students and staff, although open to the wider public, and ran by Sheffield Hallam. Parents were notified on April 13 at 6.30pm of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":333,"featured_media":60535,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,132,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-top-stories","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/333"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60514"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60597,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60514\/revisions\/60597"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}