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retha
14-06-2011, 09:44 AM
Hi everyone

I'm hoping someone can give me some advice. We are currently living in rented accommodation and our landlord told us yesterday she wants to renevate the kitchen and lounge. The work will take about 3 months to complete and they will do one room at a time so that we can continue living in the house.

What I would like to know is how this will affect my childminding? I can't stop childminding for 3 months, it will just be too much of an inconvenience to the parents cause both the children I care for start nursery & Reception in Sept so uprooting them now will be very stressful for them.

The only other option would be to go and live somewhere else for the 3 months, but finding a short-term rented flat in our area is almost impossible and extremely expensive!

Does anyone have advice for me? How will this affect my childminding? Would Ofsted be ok for me to continue childminding as long as I make sure children are safe while work is being done?

Thank for reading,
Retha

jaja
14-06-2011, 11:07 AM
I would risk assess every step of the work and look at everything that you can do to keep working, going out for the days? where are you going to cook? strangers in the house, the ages and stages of the children, how you are going to keep them safe and see if theres any way round working still...
When i move dinto my house we were gutting it and i continued to work around the mess and crazyness, i ra everything and spoke to ofsted who said as long as its ra in place and children were safe then it was ok..

Are they doing a room at a time?, how come its taking soo long to do? and any way you could be out at the times workmen are in the house? i wouldnt look at short term let as ofsted would need to clear the house for work again and all your paperwork ect...

hope ive helped a bit, good luck xx

rickysmiths
14-06-2011, 06:36 PM
How come its taking so long? We had an enormous extention built last year, remodelled the entire ground floor of our house, new shower room, new kitchen, new central heating boiler and all rads, all new windows (23 plus 2 sets of french Windows) and a large patio all done between April and Sept, 4 months.

How can a living room and a kitchen take 3 months I think that is unreasonable for you and your family and the landlord should offer alternative accomodation for the duration.

As far as working you have to notify Ofsted and RA. I spent 3 months working in a 21' PortaKabin on my front gardenn and Ofsted didn't visit just said risk assess. They didn't even visit the new house just took RAs

happydays1
15-06-2011, 08:58 AM
Hi if they are renovating the kitchen and its going to take that long they are not allowed to leave you without any water or cooking facilities, my friends are having their downstairs gutted and they have to move out by law. If you are still living there the builders will have to make sure you have water etc and make sure everything is safe and cleaned up every day.:)

retha
05-07-2011, 10:47 AM
Hi
Thank you everyone for taking the time to reply to my questions, I appreciate your advice about everything.

Regarding the renovations, the reason they said it was going to take so long is because they wanted to lift up the floors, then install heaters and leave it there for a month per room to dry up the water underneath before putting new floors down. So the actual work would only take 1 month.
However, good news is that the landlord asked for second opinion and they said the drying process not necessary at all.

So, all they will do now is lift up the kitchen floor, fix the problem and re-tile again. It will take around 4 days most.

Once again my question is - do I need to let Ofsted know or do I just risk assess it myself?
Also, can anyone that's done it before share some advice on the risk assessment - my mind's gone blank!

Thank you very much everyone!