Crackerjacks Day Nursery

Very money orientated. I decided not to put my son here and found a fantastic nursery with a better ofsted rating.
Apr 26th, 2020

We have both our children in Crackerjacks and my wife and I have been really happy with everything. Our son has been attending since 2015 and his development (and now his little sister's) has just been brilliant. Many friends/family have commented on this and we always say this is mostly down to the time in the nursery. Our daughter joined him last year in the Baby Cottage and adores her days there. The staff are lovely and when we had some challenges Fiona took as much time as was needed (many times after hours) to help us through them and imparted terrific advice. My son has become attached to several staff members who now know him as well as we do and handle things accordingly and the nursery is very keen on keeping continuity between there and home which really helps. I would 100% recommend Crackerjacks to any prospective parents looking for a great reliable nursery that can also accommodate early drops and late pickups outside of their normal hours of 8am-6pm.
Mar 21st, 2019

As a parent, i have got my son in this nursery for over a year now. I would recommend it. My son comes home everyday telling me how much fun he had, what activities were done daily. I remember when he first started, he said to me was such a warm welcome from staff and children towards him. He is not normally a shy child, but was a different environment that he was not used to. He enjoys being in there very single day, he got his special friends, he mention their names every single day and even weekends when he s doing something at home he remembers them. The whole nursery is a very warm and welcoming place. I must admited that staff looks after children and they bring the best of them. Clearly, if there is emails about other parents or any concerns coming up, as a parent is a safeguard concern towards our children and is good that the company bring these issues up, which means they are working hard on it to improve and get things better than before. As a parent, this is not a nursery about the parents, the nursery is about our children, how good they feel, how they come out from it, how much they have learned, how much they developed. And that is all that matters. Not about was has been told between adults. On an ending note nurseries are for children, not for adults. And if there s a nursery for adults, i would like to be informed.
Mar 7th, 2019

Crackerjacks Nursery has seemingly great potential with an array of amazing facilities: Great size; wonderful garden and some fantastic members of staff. However, unfortunately it is very poorly managed by the owner who in turn has created an unhealthy environment negatively impacting our child and subsequently undermining all the positives. It is for this specific reason we have decided to remove our child from this nursery after 20 months. Some issues we have experienced during our time at the nursery: High staff rotation including key management personnel our child had over 10 key workers whilst attending the nursery and numerous changes were made management during this time which led to frequent changes to the day to day running of the nursery and instability. These changes were rarely communicated in adequate timeframes and sometimes not at all. Disorganisation probably related to the high turnover of staff. Incumbent staff did all they could to manage the situation, but unfortunately there were times they were lacked awareness of what was happening within the nursery and were even instructed on occasion not to speak with the parents about the issues. Child Development Reports in the last 12 months we had two parents evenings and at both events were promised a standard Child Development Report having chased numerous times, we still do not have either report as yet and having brought this up with management and the owner, no one took responsibility for them. Invoice issues we experienced a number of issues with invoicing which didn't seem to make any sense as it was the same reoccurring payment each time. Each problem took time and multiple emails to resolve which became increasingly frustrating with every incident. Unprofessional behaviour from owner - as a paying customer we have the right to discuss any service issues experienced but on doing so both directly with the nursery on numerous occasions and subsequently with other parents to see if such issues were isolate occurrences, the owner responded with threatening emails directly to me and to other parents threatening legal action if they dare to speak amongst themselves. In these same emails and others sent, we were given information about ex-staff and parents with which the owner had issue with that was in blatant violation of privacy laws and extremely unprofessional. I did try to resolve the issue with the manager direct in person, via telephone and email but found her on all occasions uncivil, discourteous, improper and on occasion a liar making false accusations about myself, allegedly ex-staff and other parents, which were really quite distressing and frightening. Just to reiterate our child did have some amazing care by some lovely members of staff and had it not been for these same people, we would have left the nursery a long time ago. It is likely we will receive some form of abuse, threat of legal action or nasty retort from the owner for posting this review but for the first time in my life I feel duty-bound, due to the distress we went through, to let other parents know in the hope it helps stop this behaviour/occurrence in the future.
Feb 18th, 2019

This nursery created an environment of fear for us as parents. There has been a staff turnover of 9 individuals in the past 10 months, 3 of those were managers and 3 were room leaders, creating inconsistency which I believe impacts the childs development. We were unaware of who was our daughters room leader when we left. In May we received an email to all parents of one class, stating that any parent who engaged in conversation about the staff or nursery without factual base (gossip) would be subject to legal action - we felt this was a very threatening message. We just removed our daughter from there after 17 months, even though we had discussed removing her on multiple occasions, and we only kept her in there due to lack of other options and unsettling nature of changing her environment so drastically. I will say that some of the staff who I had dealing with, especially the ones who had immediate care for my daughter were excellent, it was the above concerns that eventually made us vote with our feet. You will see from the response from the nursery owner below that she and someone who I believe to be a member of her staff are the only positive reviews here. The response is remarkedly different from the email she sent me on Sunday that threatened legal action if I didnt take down my review. I amended it twice more after having legal action threatened as well as criminal proceedings threatened too. The fact she has said the matter is now closed would suggest she admits that my review is 100% true and she no longer can threaten legal action.
Nov 15th, 2018