Kingsclere pre-school stays put

Busy Bees turn down mooted move to village leisure centre due to £250k costs

A KINGSCLERE pre-school in need of more space has turned down a mooted move to a leisure centre in the village, on the grounds that refitting costs would be too high.

The Busy Bees Pre-school, which is currently housed in the Scout hut in Strokins Road, was in talks with the Kingsclere Community Association, which runs the Fieldgate Centre, in Fieldgate Drive, about moving to the centre, but the cost of this has been estimated to be at least £250,000.

The chairman of the association, Alan Hambidge, said at the annual meeting last Tuesday (Sep 20):“We have recently had talks with Busy Bees on the possibility of them moving here, but it's very early days yet.”

However, after the meeting, Busy Bees manager Maria Meredith said that the idea was a non-starter.

She cited several reasons for this, saying that children would have to walk through a bar area, there was no secure play area, the hall was used for other purposes during the day and there were no suitable storage facilities.

She said: “That's the reason we left [the Fieldgate Centre] in the first place, 10 years ago, after two or three years in place there.

“It was really nice of Mr Hambidge to invite us and give us time to talk about it, but refurbishment would cost so much, at least a quarter-of-a-million pounds.”

She added that neither the nursery nor local councils had this amount of spare cash.

*At last Tuesday's (Sep 20) annual meeting of the Kingsclere Community Association, (members pictured) the re-elected treasurer, Mike Farey, revealed the group had a deficit for the second consecutive year, of £2,349.

The chairman, Alan Hambidge, said that he remained buoyant about the achievements of the association's new committee, which he said had made “considerable strides forward”.

In particular, he noted the peppercorn rent obtained for The Fieldgate Centre from Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council, which would reduce annual expenditure by £12,000.

The previous year, the association made a loss of £2,090.

Also re-elected at the meeting were vice-chairman Colin

Harvey and secretary Lesley Farey, as well as a new committee member, Alison Collington.