OASIS Day Nursery should know for certain next week that its future is secure following agreement by Cambridgeshire County Council Cabinet.

The Cabinet is to be asked to approve running the day nursery based at the Oasis Centre, Wisbech, for another year.

In the meantime the council will look for private, voluntary or independent providers to take on the management from September 2013.

Jemma Keegan, the Oasis review project manager, will deliver the outcome of a review in which she points out the nursery is the only one of 316 early years and childcare schemes in the county run and managed directly by the council.

Although the centre has never operated at full capacity, she says, a recent consultation among parents, carers and the community found everyone “strongly in favour of keeping the facility open.”

Ms Keegan believes the recent closure of two voluntary managed pre schools in the Wisbech area together with the Government’s decision to provide funding to increase free childcare places for two year olds, should lead to increased demand for the Oasis nursery.

One idea is to reduce the size of the nursery to enable the county council subsidy to drop around �47,000 but the council is hopeful that costs would reduce even more should a private or voluntary group take it over.

Ms Keegan says the authority has been criticised for not publicising the nursery but a spin off from recent consultations has been to raise awareness and generate some interest from parents in taking up places.

Door to door survey work also helped and further door to door research is planned in June which should make it better known.