Parents rally cry: Please Save Our Nursery

And they are using their own WhatsApp group and social media to call parents to arms ahead of a consultation meeting next week.

West Lothian Council is staging a meeting at the school on Wednesday (October 2) from 7.30pm to 8.30pm – and parents are asking everyone who will be impacted now and in future to attend.

Catie Edwards is among the nursery parents who have joined the Save our Nursery campaign group.

Explaining why, she said: “The proposal implies that the transition from nursery to school would be the same for children moving from a nursery attached to a different school.

“This just simply isn’t the case and means more children forming young friendships will be separated on entering primary school. Speaking from my experience, the friendships established by my daughters in nursery continuing into primary school contributed significantly to their happy transitions.”

Catie’s daughters Skye (7) and Robyn (4) attended the nursery and are now at the primary school. However, if the proposals go ahead, her youngest daughter, nine-month-old Evelyn, will not follow in their footsteps.

She added: “We won’t be able to walk to school together; I’ll have to drive Evelyn to another nursery at a very busy time when we’re supposed to be promoting active travel and less use of cars.

“As for savings, no staff are allegedly being made redundant and the nursery is a part of the school so where are the savings here?”

While transport in a town as busy as Linlithgow surely has to be factored in, even if emotional ties do not, some of the figures in the report have also been called into question.

Catie added: “The figures included in the proposal document don’t reflect the reality of capacity at LBPS nursery class – and potentially don’t reflect the true capacity of its suggested alternative facilities either.

“This means its closure could quite quickly lead to capacity issues in the town. Due to the pattern of hours available to children and parental preference, there is consistently a bottleneck in places that means LBPS nursery class is turning down parental requests for hours.

“Last year, spaces were unavailable for parents requests with a roll of 39 out of 64. If these bottlenecks were addressed, families could use the facilities more.

“Many private nurseries tackle this issue by allowing parents to opt for a mixture of full and half days up to the 1140 hours per annum. Were these more flexible options to be provided at council nurseries the capacity would be much more likely to be utilised, top ups would be more valuable and cost efficiencies would increase.”

Fellow parent Neil Brady-Campbell is among those whose catchment area was changed to Linlithgow Bridge nursery class in 2023.

He said: “They are proposing to close the nursery by next August, so my youngest son will only have one year at Linlithgow Bridge and then we’ll have to go elsewhere – with all the upheaval and upset that will entail.

“I thought we were lucky as we managed to get a place; I know parents who applied for Linlithgow Bridge in the rezoned catchment area who were knocked back. The figures simply don’t add up.”

Council’s position on closure plans

West Lothian Council’s education executive agreed at its meeting on September 3 to commence statutory consultation on the proposal to close Linlithgow Bridge Nursery Class.

It is is one of nine nursery classes it is proposing to close, claiming a huge oversupply of early learning and childcare provision in West Lothian council facilities.

The council has capacity for over 6814 children in its nursery settings. This year, it had an oversupply of 2017 places, which is nearly 30 per cent more than is needed to meet demand.

Greg Welsh, the council's head of education, said that even with the potential closure of nine nurseries, the council would still have more than enough capacity to meet demand in each of the areas affected – given the number of local alternatives.

Andrew McGuire, executive councillor for education, said: “The education executive has approved plans to begin consultation with parents and stakeholders on the planned reduction of nine nursery and early learning buildings, given the high number of surplus spaces in council nurseries.”

Before any closures can be considered, relevant steps have to be undertaken – including consultation and dialogue with parents/carers at each facility.

The consultation process will include online materials, email and public meetings within each of the individual nursery settings.

For Linlithgow Bridge, that meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday.

Officers have confirmed that, should the closures go ahead, the nurseries would not close until August 2025.

Council leader Lawrence Fitzpatrick said: “Councils receive 80 per cent of our funding from the Scottish Government so we have no choice but to reduce spending and some services.

“This is a clear example where we can continue to deliver important services but also work much more efficiently. I appreciate that some parents will not want to have their local nursery close but the council needs to change the way in which services are delivered and it is only right that officers look at options to address the fact that we have 30 per cent more nursery space than is needed to meet demand.”