By Vishav Roma, CEO of Kinderzimmer UK

Early years education more often than not doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Not from policymakers, not from lenders, and not from the media. And yet the numbers speak for themselves: fewer than one in three local authorities in the UK currently have enough childcare places for children under two, and the DfE estimates the sector needs around 70,000 new places just to meet current demand. The gap is structural, it’s widening, and it’s why I’m in this business.

On the funding reforms

In September 2025, the government completed its phased rollout of funded childcare hours — the most significant expansion of early years support in a generation. Eligible working parents can now access up to 30 hours a week of funded childcare from when their child is nine months old, up from the previous entitlement which was largely limited to three and four-year-olds. For families, it’s a meaningful step forward. For operators, it’s more complicated on the ground than the headlines suggest.

There’s a significant administrative layer that comes with it. Parents need to understand what they’re entitled to and how the system works, and much of that education falls to us. The rates for younger ages are fairly good, though there’s room for improvement at the older end. And while the increases have been positive, rising costs in the sector are outpacing them.

None of that diminishes what’s been achieved. The reforms are a substantial move in the right direction. But operators who go in expecting a straightforward tailwind will find the reality more nuanced than that.

What I’d say to operators thinking about expanding

First: the opportunity is real. There is a genuine undersupply of quality nursery spaces across many parts of the UK. The Home Counties and parts of the Midlands: these are areas where demand consistently exceeds provision, and where the right operator with the right product can build something sustainable.

The emphasis on quality matters here. A discount model in early years is a difficult business. If you’re competing on price, you’re competing on the thing you can least afford to compromise on: the people delivering the experience. Quality positioning, in the right location, with the right fee rate, is what makes the numbers work over the long term.

But quality alone isn’t enough. Know your data thoroughly. Understand your customer demographics. Know your catchment radius. And before you commit to a site, interrogate every number in your capex programme — surveys, build costs, programme timeline. Get it wrong and you may be paying for that mistake for the next decade.

The other thing I’d say: make sure your team can absorb growth before you accelerate it. Expansion without infrastructure is how operators lose what made them good in the first place. Build the team alongside the business, not after it.

One area I think is genuinely underserved: technology. Modern nurseries have an opportunity to use apps and digital tools to transform the parent experience. At Kinderzimmer, we run our operations through an app that gives parents real-time updates: nappy changes, feeding, sleep, activities, development milestones. They can message the team directly. It closes the gap between a parent’s working day and what their child is doing. Plenty of smaller independents are still using manual sheets. That gap is an opportunity for operators willing to invest in it.

On choosing the right funding partner

We’ve worked with a number of lenders. What made OakNorth different was the conversation.

Most lenders look at a spreadsheet. OakNorth looked at the business: the trajectory, the team, the vision, the passion behind what we were building. There’s a real alignment in how both organisations think: OakNorth was built by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs, and that comes through in how they engage. They wanted to understand what we were trying to achieve, not just whether we could service a debt.

For an operator in early years, that matters. This is a people-first business in a heavily regulated sector. A lender who sees only the numbers is a lender who doesn’t really understand what you’re doing or why it works. Finding one who does is worth more than the rate.

We’re at ten sites now, with a plan to reach thirty by 2030. The ambition is to be recognised as the highest-quality provider of early years education in the UK. Getting there means staying focused on the teams, making sure educators feel supported, safe, and able to do their best work. If you get that right, everything else follows.

Kinderzimmer operates nine nurseries across London and the South East, with a tenth site, Kinderzimmer Godalming at Ockford Mill, opening in 2026. OakNorth provided a £3.4m loan to support the development of the Godalming site.