The company behind the 32-place Crayford pre-school resolved to wind up on 14 September, six months after Ofsted judged it to be meeting the expected standard.

A pre-school with 32 registered places in Crayford, about two miles west of Dartford town centre, has gone into liquidation. Members of St Paulinus Pre School Limited passed a resolution to wind the company up voluntarily at a general meeting on 14 September 2026, and the notice was published in the London Gazette four days later. (The Gazette, notice 5212715)

Ofsted’s register now lists the setting as closed. (Ofsted, URN 2745064)

Crayford is in the London Borough of Bexley, not Dartford borough, but it carries a DA1 postcode and sits on the western edge of the Dartford Online area.

What the register records

  • Company: St Paulinus Pre School Limited, company number 14263561, a company limited by guarantee with no share capital. Incorporated 29 July 2022.
  • Trading address: St Paulinus Church Hall, Manor Road, Dartford, DA1 4EP, as given in the Gazette. Ofsted records the setting at St Paulinus Community Hall, Manor Road, Crayford, DA1 4ET.
  • Type of liquidation: creditors’ voluntary, resolved at a general meeting on 14 September 2026.
  • Liquidator: Isobel Susan Brett (IP number 9643) of Bretts Business Recovery Limited, 21 Highfield Road, Dartford. Appointed 14 September by the company and its creditors. (The Gazette, notice 5212733)
  • Registered office: moved to the liquidator’s Dartford address on 21 September. (Companies House filing history)

A creditors’ voluntary liquidation is the route a company takes when its directors or members conclude it cannot go on and choose to wind it up rather than be wound up by a court. Anyone owed money deals with the liquidator, not the company.

It was not a quality failure

Ofsted inspected on 3 March 2026 and published the report card on 11 May. The setting was judged to be meeting the expected standard across achievement, behaviour and routines, children’s welfare and wellbeing, and curriculum and teaching. The safeguarding standards were met. (Ofsted inspection report, 3 March 2026)

Inspectors recorded 32 places for children aged two to four. They described children with special educational needs learning “to speak in progressively longer sentences”, staff who “know children and their families well”, and a key-person system that was “successful in terms of helping children to develop a sound sense of belonging”.

The criticisms were small: the room sometimes became noisy enough for children to lose focus, and leaders recognised that they did not take every opportunity to teach children about healthy eating.

The accounts

The company filed its last set of accounts, to 31 July 2025, in April this year. They are abbreviated small-company accounts, so there is no income figure, but the balance sheet shows:

  • net assets of £3,441, up from a deficit of £2,021 a year earlier
  • cash at bank of £72,639
  • creditors falling due after more than one year of £62,734, unchanged on the previous year
  • an average of 11 employees, including directors, during the year, up from 10

Nothing in that filing points to a business about to close. The company confirmed its details to Companies House as recently as 28 July 2026, with no updates.

The pre-school registered with Ofsted under this company on 8 September 2023, taking over from an earlier registration at the same church hall which closed in September 2022.

We could not reach a statement from the pre-school; the only web presence we could find for it is a Facebook page, which would not load for us. Anyone connected to the setting who wants to set out what happened can contact us, and we will publish it.

What it means for you

  • If your child had a place, the liquidator is the point of contact. Bretts Business Recovery Limited is handling the winding up, and the Gazette gives a contact email and telephone number on the notice.
  • If you paid fees in advance, register as a creditor. In a creditors’ voluntary liquidation, unpaid deposits and prepaid fees are claims against the company. They are dealt with in the liquidation, not by the hall or the church.
  • Bexley Council, not Kent, holds the childcare duty here. Crayford sits in the London Borough of Bexley, so its family information service is the route to finding an alternative place and to checking funded-hours entitlement.
  • Check any replacement on the Ofsted register first. The register shows whether a provider is open, when it was last inspected and what it was judged to be. It is free and takes a minute.

Anyone named in an insolvency notice has the right to reply, and a liquidation is not a finding against the people who ran a setting.

Sources

More local business coverage: Dartford town centre empty shops and Dimples Day Nursery’s move to employee ownership.