PARENTS and staff at a popular Cirencester nursery are devastated at the news it will be closing down, after a "difficult" 30 day consultation.

At the beginning of February Cirencester College announced plans to shut its Bright Eyes nursery due to the cabin-style building being "not fit for purpose".

Staff at the Stroud Road college entered an “intense” consultation period for 30 days. They broke the bad news to distraught parents and staff on Tuesday night this week.

Chairman of Governors at the college Jane Sharp said the team had “exhausted every option in terms of alternative funding, partnerships, premises and third-party providers” but had eventually been forced to close down the much-loved private nursery, as there was not adequate funding to keep it running.

Vice principal of the college, and senior line manager at Bright Eyes, Libby Reed said nursery staff had suffered a really difficult 30 days.

“I feel terribly sorry for them and I really feel their pain,” she said. “We have had to sit down and say who are we at Cirencester Sixth Form College? Who has to come first? It’s the 2,100 16-18 year olds and all those who have applied to come here this year.”

College principal Kim Clifford said the decision to close the nursery was one of the hardest things she had to do in her career.

“You cannot fail to be moved by our nursery staff, those young children and their parents,” she said. “Sadly the college does not have the funds to continue what has been a truly lovely nursery.”

Jazz Cool, whose two-year-old son Willoughby attends Bright Eyes, said she was in the nursery earlier this week and saw the manager in tears.

“We’ve been forced to look for alternative care for the one child I have there,” she said. “There are not great choices in Cirencester for a full time nursery.

“We are not particularly good at change but when you’re two it’s horrendous.

“The nursery staff are all terribly upset. We went in there and it felt like bereavement. There’s a real feeling of sadness.”

She said that a few of the nursery staff had already been lucky enough to find other jobs but many had been uncertain whether to start looking, as they did not know the future of the nursery.

“Everybody was not sure what was happening even though the decision had already been made,” she added. “They were in uncertain times as they didn’t know whether to believe the hype about the nursery.”

Thanks to the Standard’s editorial comment last month, asking the community to rally round to save Bright Eyes, various providers came forward to ask about running a nursery on the college site.

However, Mrs Reed said the college was not land rich and needed to conserve space for its core sixth form business.

The college has announced that Bright Eyes' baby room will close on May 29 and the toddler room on July 17. The children starting primary school in September will be cared for until August 28.