Islington Council has faced down accusations it kept the looming closure of a nursery under wraps until after the May elections.
By Josef Steen, Local Democracy Reporter
Islington Council has faced down accusations it kept the looming closure of a nursery under wraps until after the May elections.
The backlash over the shutdown of the original nursery provision at Paradise Park Children’s Centre dominated a council meeting on Thursday, September 24, as a petition to halt the closure was debated by councillors. The nursery closed on July 22 after the centre’s operator, Islington Play Association (IPA), surrendered its contract amid financial turmoil for the charity.
Many parents lobbied the Labour-run council to keep its doors open, decrying the loss of the “wonderful and caring” Paradise Park and raising fears of a lack of affordable alternatives.
Islington has since set up temporary childcare provision at the same site for those families still looking for new childcare, but has faced fierce criticism for allowing the nursery to close, as well as accusations that it kept quiet about the issue until after the elections.
These suspicions came to a head on Thursday, as Cllr Carlos Valero (Green) said: “It is curious to me, and maybe to members of the public, that the decision was communicated to the public 13 days after an election in a ward which only needed a few hundred votes to swing Green.”
Labour won the local elections in Islington on May 8, 2026, though the party lost 12 seats as the Greens gained 16 new councillors.
An outraged Cllr Sheila Chapman (Labour), Executive Member for Children, Schools and Families, said: “What an unhelpful contribution. And how dare you suggest that this administration is trying to sweep things under the carpet.”
‘Not our decision’
In a now-removed public post on May 20, Islington said it had “reluctantly agreed to the trustees’ request” to close the Paradise Park nursery provision at the end of the summer term.
Cllr Chapman later revealed that IPA had told the council it could no longer run the nursery for financial reasons back in December 2025. On Thursday, she continued: “I don’t know how else to say this: This was a unilateral decision due to financial circumstances taken by a third-party provider. So once again, not the council’s decision.”
IPA has disputed that the suggestion came from trustees, and said “allegations of financial mismanagement are also unfounded”. Yet the charity has admitted it faced serious financial pressures and has declined to add further comment.
Though the centre closed on July 22, two months before Thursday’s debate, Cllr Janet Falkenberg (Green) said the council needed to launch a full review to understand the “human cost” of the closure. Cllr Chapman refused, insisting the council had been fully transparent but that the Greens “simply don’t like the answers”.
She furthermore argued that it would “not have been right” for the borough “to throw some money towards IPA” who had “already told us they were facing insolvency”. The cabinet member added that establishing a new council-run nursery would “not have been prudent use of public money when there were sufficient childcare places” elsewhere in the borough.
Cllr Chapman added that she was yet to hear from anyone who was still struggling to find a place for their child, and urged any who were to come forward.
Legal challenge thrown out
The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) previously spoke to parents who feared “significant damage” to their children if they were uprooted from their nursery at Paradise Park. Johnny Singer said he had found a lack of options elsewhere, especially at cost-friendly locations. “There aren’t – not for months, not at a price most of our families can afford, and not for children with additional needs”.
This led a group of parents to lodge a judicial review over the decision, as they argued that the council’s decision to pursue the closure breached its statutory duty to ensure sufficient childcare was available to the borough’s families.
However, the case was thrown out by the High Court in July. The judge, Mrs Justice Eady, deemed it “totally without merit”.
