Nursery faces overwhelming demand – from its own staff

A NURSERY is celebrating a bumper time for babies after nine of its staff, or more than a third of the workforce, fell pregnant.

Seven of the Happy Jays nursery staff had babies last year with a further two due to give birth in the next few weeks.

The nursery, based in Hopper Hill Road at Scarborough Business Park, held a celebratory photograph session for the staff mums and their new arrivals.

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Nursery manager Louise Goodger said: "This has been something of a record for us.

"It is usual to have one or two staff who are expecting babies at any one time, but to have nine of our staff taking maternity leave at the same time has been quite an achievement.

"We have 24 staff altogether so to have nine of them going on maternity leave has been a bit of a challenge but at least they have managed to stagger it a bit so we have just needed a couple of extra staff to cover.

"All the mums are coming back to work and want spaces at the nursery for their children The parents think it is hilarious and joke that there must be a special chair in the staff room which the staff sit on to get pregnant. I know that all the collections for the mums has all but wiped me out."

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As the mother of two teenage boys, she moved to Scarborough from Berkshire in 2005 when the nursery opened in Hopper Hill Road.

Since then it has grown rapidly and regularly receives accolades from local parents for its standards of nursery care.

The nursery is part of the award-winning regional Happy Jays group which has a network of nurseries that includes sites York and Boroughbridge in North Yorkshire and another at Batley in West Yorkshire.