Premier Lodge Day Nursery

Eight rooms, a council allotment and a fortnightly trip to a care home: the week here is built around getting children out of their base room and into the world around it. At its inspection on 16 June 2026, Ofsted judged Premier Lodge Day Nursery to be at the strong standard in every one of the six evaluation areas, with safeguarding standards met.

Children start from three months and stay through to the term before school. The nursery sits on Station Road in Sidcup, trades as Chamberlain Childcare Ltd, and opens 51 weeks a year. Half days are sold alongside full days, which matters to any family that does not need five long days.

Character comes from how much of the day happens beyond the room walls. There is a designated Forest School area and a mud kitchen in the garden, an allotment rented from the council since 2023, weekly Jo Jingles music sessions, weekly coaching from AW Football Coaching, and a cook who prepares every meal on the premises. All of it sits on top of the Early Years Foundation Stage, the statutory framework whose seven areas of learning shape what staff plan for each child.

Rooms and Ages

Seven age-banded rooms sit alongside a shared soft play room, so children move up roughly every year rather than spending three years in one space. Tiny Explorers, the baby room, cares for 9 babies from three months and plans its day around settling, routine and curiosity play with natural and wooden materials. Little Discoverers and Little Creators each care for 9 children and cover the same 18-months-to-two stretch, the first with a built-in home corner, the second with a large climbing gym for physical play.

Group size steps up at two. Big Adventurers cares for 20 children with its own free-flow garden used as part of the room, so children choose inside or outside through the day; Big Imaginers, the second two-to-three room, cares for 16 children. Investigators, for three and four year olds, also cares for 16 children and works on independence, emotional resilience and Makaton alongside letters and sounds. Pre-school cares for 25 children across two rooms, where the emphasis turns to early writing, mathematics, self-care and the move to primary school.

The soft play room, with its ball pit and construction area, is shared by every room for tumbling, role play and sensory time.

Learning and Named Experiences

The framework is the Early Years Foundation Stage, England's statutory curriculum for under-fives. For the youngest children that means days planned around the three prime areas, personal, social and emotional development, communication and language, and physical development. From two upwards, planning covers all seven areas of learning, with letters and sounds and early mathematics folded into an ordinary day of creative play, story times, singing and curiosity play.

Above that statutory floor sit several named programmes, each with a shape a parent can picture. Jo Jingles runs weekly in the rooms, structured by age, introducing themes such as colours, shapes, numbers and animals through nursery rhymes, props and percussion. Forest School has its own designated area and mud kitchen in the garden, with trained leaders running sessions twice a week for the three and four year olds on bird feeders, mud pies and natural-object experiments, and every room reaching it in small groups. A weekly sports session comes from AW Football Coaching, a multi-sports and primary PE provider working across south-east London and Kent, and covers ball skills, coordination, listening and turn-taking. Phonics Stars builds phonological awareness through environmental sounds, body percussion, rhyme and oral blending, ending each session with mark making, pom poms or play dough. Yoga runs daily in Pre-school for emotional regulation.

Outdoor and Community Life

Every child is outdoors morning and afternoon, every day, in all weathers, in small groups from their base room. The babies have their own soft-surfaced garden space at the rear of their room, which is the practical detail that decides whether the youngest children actually get out.

The allotment is the strongest single thing here. Taken on from the council in 2023 and cleared by parents and staff, it now carries raised beds of tomatoes, runner beans, courgettes and strawberries, plus a plum tree and a fig tree, and a group of children goes every Wednesday to plant, dig, prune and water. Produce comes back to nursery for children to taste and to take home. Pre-school children also visit a local BUPA care home fortnightly to sing, dance and do activities with residents, and the wider run of outings in June 2026 took children to the library, the shops and a farm.

Relationships and Communication

Each baby has a named key person who knows their individual needs and plans for them. In June 2026 the baby room was calm and unhurried, with staff giving babies time to respond to a choice rather than moving them along, and babies leaning into an adult to explore the textured pages of a book. Children were putting their own shoes on, serving themselves with tongs at the salad bar and helping with the shift between activities, which is what early independence looks like when it is built into routine rather than taught as a lesson. Parents get daily conversation at handover and regular updates through a digital platform.

Inclusion and Wellbeing

Inspectors in June 2026 recorded that staff maintain working partnerships with speech and language therapists, occupational therapists and local authority support officers, and that targeted early work with children showing small delays reduced the need for onward referrals. Communication boards, sign language and visuals are used to keep communication open for every child, and the management team includes a deputy manager holding the SENDCo role.

Food is a strength rather than a logistics problem. The cook prepares every meal on site Monday to Friday from fresh produce, with a vegetarian option daily, a tailored menu for babies under six months and support through weaning. Children take part in weekly cooking sessions in aprons and chef hats. The kitchen holds a 5 rating from its most recent food hygiene check and a Healthy Catering Award achieved with Bexley, menus are low in sugar, and twice a week a starter replaces pudding. The nursery publishes a nut-free policy and accommodates individual dietary needs.

Premier Lodge Day Nursery is at 11-13 Station Road, Sidcup DA15 7EN, and takes children from three months to five years.

Sessions and Attendance

A full day runs 07:15 to 18:15, Monday to Friday. A half day is sold either as a morning, 08:00 to 13:00, or as an afternoon, 13:00 to 18:00, so a family needing three mornings a week is buying a published pattern rather than negotiating one. The nursery runs 51 weeks a year, and a holiday club runs on an ad hoc basis during school holidays for families already using it.

Funding and Paid Extras

Funded sessions are delivered here. Meals are charged separately from childcare and calculated monthly on funded-only sessions, and that meal charge is voluntary: a family already paying it gives a term's notice to opt out and then brings in food itself, labelled, balanced and listed by ingredient, since nothing brought from outside can be reheated on the premises. Current childcare and meal rates sit on the nursery's fees and funding page.

Getting There

The nursery is within walking distance of Sidcup Station and describes itself as a 2 minute walk from all major bus routes and the main High Street.

• Group size changes sharply at two. Under-twos sit in rooms of nine. From two, rooms hold 16 or 20 children. Pre-school takes 25 children across two rooms. None of that is unusual for a nursery of this size, but the jump is worth seeing in person: ask how the larger rooms are grouped through the day, and who is with your child at lunch and at sleep time.
• Meals are a separate line, and the kitchen is nut-free. The charge is voluntary and monthly on funded-only sessions, and opting out means providing food yourself under conditions the nursery sets. Families managing an allergy or a specialised diet should confirm current kitchen practice directly before signing.
• How places usually work. Where a nursery cannot offer every day a family wants, the usual outcome is a part-week pattern, or days that were not the first choice. In busy areas parents register a long way ahead, and some families run a child across two settings until one can cover the whole week, at the cost of more upheaval for the adults and more change for the child.

This is a setting for families who want a child out of the building regularly: at the allotment on a Wednesday, in the care home once a fortnight, in the garden twice a day whatever the weather, and in a Forest School area rather than a corner labelled as one. The June 2026 judgements put it at the strong standard across the board, and the detail underneath them, calm baby-room practice, independence built into mealtimes, real therapy partnerships, is what a parent should weigh rather than the label.

It suits a family needing a full day covered from 07:15, and equally a parent buying two or three mornings a week, since half days are sold as mornings or afternoons in their own right. Families who want the smallest possible group beyond age two should look hard at the two-to-three and Pre-school rooms first, because that is where this nursery's scale shows.