LABOUR ACCUSED OF HYPOCRISY

Mr Allen is the Liberal Democrat council cabinet member for lifelong learning - a post held by Mr Wynn under the Labour administration ousted following May's local elections by a Lib Dem-Tory alliance. Mr Wynn sent an e-mail about the nurseries, whose future survival continues to hang in the balance, on September 4. The nurseries - Stonehill, in Stonehill Road, Whitecross, in Watson Street, and Castle, in Copeland Street - had been earmarked for closure as part of a shake up of early years education in the city.

The leader of Derby's Labour group, Chris Williamson, said Mr Wynn's comments were personal, and not Labour policy. The emergence of Mr Wynn's e-mail has added fuel to the fire and led to fresh accusations that Labour only wanted to save the three axe-threatened nursery schools so they could be given to asylum seekers. Councillor Maurice Burgess, the Liberal Democrat leader of the city council said, "When we first received the suggestion, we thought it was a joke, knowing how sensitive the subject of nursery closures is to parents. So far in the city, we've managed to integrate asylum seeker children into the education system and not create divisions, which this would surely do."

Councillor Wynn remained defiant saying he was being "practical" and looking for uses for the three nursery schools, which could become financially unviable following Government funding changes. Mr Wynn said, "For some time, I've been looking at possible roles for the three nursery schools to prevent their closure. I've raised other ideas with both the councillors and officers but this one I confined to e-mail directly to Councillor Allen because of its political sensitivity." The city's Labour group has been accused of "hypocrisy" after it joined the fight to save threatened nursery schools. Opposition Labour councillors pledged to help save two out the three nursery schools facing the axe.

The ruling alliance of Liberal Democrats and Conservatives hit back, claiming the same Labour members commissioned the study which suggested the closures but Labour has denied it had any plans to close the nurseries before being ousted in May. It was revealed that Whitecross Nursey School, in Watson Street, Stonehill Nursery, in Stonehill Road, and Castle Nursery, in Copeland Street, could be closed to cut surplus places. The future of the three nurseries, which have 120 full-time places, will form part of a consultation exercise, which will also gauge reaction to turning the city's five other nursery schools into children's centres.

Pauline Latham, Conservative ward councillor for Oakwood, said, "This is total hypocrisy and the group should be ashamed of itself over this issue. This is based on a Labour party paper brought to the council cabinet by city education officers. Members of the Labour group told me several months ago that closing the nursery schools would allow more even distribution of nursery provision in the city. We accepted the proposal for consultation and discussion, but the closure of Whitecross Nursery will take place over my dead body because we know how important an issue this is to many people."

Liberal Democrat Maurice Burgess, who is leader of the city council, has also waded into the row. He said, "If they were in power now they would be pressing ahead with this same document. Their negative attitude is very destructive." The Labour group, which is not fighting the closure of Castle Nursery, which could be turned into a nursery for NHS staff, delivered leaflets to 3,000 homes in the Darley, Abbey and Arboretum wards. Labour councillor Chris Wynne, education spokesman, said, "I do not accept that there were any plans to close any nursery schools when I was cabinet member for lifelong learning up to May. We support the principle of children's centres but believe that they should be up and running before the nursery schools are considered. At the moment the document is half-baked and ramshackle."

The city council cabinet paper made it clear that the nurseries were underused. It also claimed they are expensive, with each full-time place costing about £3,999, compared to £2,509 for a similar-aged child in a school nursery department. The nurseries that are proposed as children's centres are Lord Street Nursery, Central Nursery, in Nuns Street, Walbrook Nursery, in Middleton Street, Harrington Nursery, in Harrington Street, and Ashgate Nursery, in Stepping Lane. The planned closures are part of a review of education for three and four-year-olds. The remaining five city council nursery schools would become "children's centres", designed to provide daycare and nursery facilities for children up to four years of age.

A cabinet meeting at the beginning of August said that a strategy to create nine children's centres in the city could result in the closure of Whitecross, Stonehill and Castle nursery schools because they were too small to be converted. But at the start of the consultation period, the three nurseries had been taken out of the process for now. The city council said that it is consulting only on the creation of the children's centres, costing £2.5m, which would involve the other five of the city's eight nursery schools - Walbrook, Harrington, Lord Street, Central and Ashgate.

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