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Running a nursery means juggling a lot at once. There’s Ofsted to prepare for, staff to recruit and train, rotas to cover and families to support. Most importantly, there are the little ones in your care every single day.
With all of that on your plate, keeping occupancy steady can feel like just one more thing to think about. It’s no surprise that it often slips down the list. The good news is that it doesn’t have to mean a big marketing push or hours of extra work. Many occupancy gaps are predictable, and once you can see them clearly, small changes and processes can close them.
Before you can fill spaces, you need a clear picture of where they are and what’s causing them.
Rather than looking at occupancy as one overall number, break it down by:
Find your real blocker
Once you can see your gaps, ask what’s behind them. Usually it comes down to one, or a combination of factors:
Knowing which one you’re dealing with tells you where to put your energy, so you’re not running open days when the real issue is staffing, or recruiting when the real gap is Friday afternoons.
Some gaps can be seen coming months in advance. Children leave for school in September. Others age up into the next room, leaving a space behind them.
Nuuri data shows that, on average, parents enquire and book tours around five months before their preferred start date. That means the families who will fill your September spaces are likely to be looking in spring.
Work backwards from each known gap and plan your admissions activity to match. For September leavers, that might mean running an open day around April. For room moves, think about the space a child leaves behind as well as the one they move into, so it’s backfilled in good time.
When you know which spaces you need to fill, every enquiry becomes more useful.
Show parents who you are online
For most families, the search starts online, often in the evening once their own little ones are in bed. Photos of real rooms and real moments do far more than generic images. Make the practical details easy to find too: opening hours, the ages you care for, fees, funded hours and menus.
Use an enquiry form, not just an email address
A simple enquiry form asks for the details you need straight away: the child’s date of birth, their preferred start date, the days or sessions they need and whether they plan to use funded hours. You can see at a glance whether they fit one of your gaps, and reply properly the first time.
Reply quickly, with a next step
Parents often contact several nurseries at once, and the settings that reply first are usually the ones that get the visit. Aim to reply the same day with a clear next step, such as booking a tour or coming to your next open day. Agree who on the team owns replies so nothing sits waiting in an inbox.
Not every family who enquires is ready to start straight away, and you won’t always have the right space when they need it. These families are some of your most valuable future admissions, but they’re also the easiest to lose, so a little follow-up goes a long way.
It starts straight after a tour or open day. A quick message thanking the family and explaining how to secure a place or join your waitlist helps turn interest into a booking. Once they’re on your waitlist, keep that contact going. A family who hears nothing for months may assume they’ve been forgotten and accept a place elsewhere, whereas a short, regular update keeps your setting front of mind, even if it simply confirms they’re still on the list and when you expect a space.
Make it part of your routine
Keeping occupancy steady is far easier as a habit than a rescue job. A few small routines stop families slipping through the cracks without taking over your week:
You don’t need to tackle everything at once. Start by mapping your occupancy by room, session and start date, and work out what’s really holding it back. From there, you’ll know exactly where to focus.
If you’d like to make it easier for local parents to find you, Nuuri can help you showcase your setting, manage enquiries and tour bookings, and keep your waitlist warm, with each family’s age, sessions and start date in one place so you can match them to your gaps.
Nuuri is the UK’s leading nursery search and enrolment platform, created to make finding and managing childcare simple, transparent, and stress-free.
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