Are they running from responsibility? Owners of ‘overcrowded’ nursery where nine-month-old Genevieve Meehan was killed have quit their £1million Cheshire mansion for France and haven’t been heard from since, locals say

There are few more stressful ordeals for new parents than finding the right childcare when the time comes to go back to work.

Those who visited Tiny Toes nursery in Cheadle Hulme were no doubt reassured by the ‘safe, stimulating and, above all, caring environment’ promised by the Cheshire nursery’s website; not to mention that its grandly titled ‘Creator of Early Years Education’ had been awarded a ‘knighthood for services to education in France’.

Then there was the fact that Tiny Toes clients included a BBC journalist whose young son attended the nursery. A video filmed at the BBC Breakfast studio in Manchester and proudly posted on the nursery website in 2019 showed presenters including Carol Kirkwood, Nina Warhurst and Ben Thompson, greeting the Tiny Toes children from the famous sofa with ‘a special hello’ to camera. Another happy parent, writing a glowing review, thanked the nursery’s 59-year-old owner, former amateur racing driver Franck Pelle, for his ‘sales pitch’ which ‘persuaded us’, adding that it was ‘a great decision’ to send their daughter there.

But this week, as one of Mr Pelle’s most senior members of staff was jailed for 14 years for the manslaughter of a baby girl in his nursery’s care, neither he nor his 66-year-old wife Karen, a co-owner of the business, were anywhere to be seen or heard.

Click here to resize this module

Serious concerns were raised in court this week about staffing levels and overcrowding at the nursery, which has since closed down, and there will be an inquiry by Stockport Council working alongside Greater Manchester Police into possible health and safety failings. Amid this, the Pelles have rented out their £1million mansion complete with swimming pool and tennis courts near Macclesfield and, according to former neighbours, are now living in Mr Pelle’s native France where they own a luxury chalet in the Hautes Alpes.

The wealthy couple have not been present at Manchester Crown Court over the past month to hear how their deputy manager, Kate Roughley, 37, strapped nine-month-old Genevieve Meehan face down on to a bean bag in the nursery’s baby room and covered her with a blanket because she wouldn’t go to sleep.

On Monday, Roughley, who joined the nursery straight from college when she was 18 years old and had worked there for 17 years, was found guilty of manslaughter by ill-treatment after the prosecution said she ‘persecuted’ the youngster for occupying too much of her time.

Genevieve, the daughter of barrister John Meehan and his solicitor wife Katie, died from asphyxiation brought on by a combination of pathophysiological stresses created by a ‘very unsafe sleeping environment’. She was left for over 90 minutes before being found ‘unresponsive and blue’.

Click here to resize this module

But according to evidence heard in court, this horrific crime also took place at a time when the staff-to-children ratio at the nursery was, at various times, one to nine, two to 11, two to 13 and even one to 16.

On the day Genevieve, known as Gigi, died, Roughley was one of two staff members caring for 11 babies at the nursery when legal guidelines in England dictate that one person should never have sole care of more than three children under the age of two.

Staff member Megan Goldsby, who worked in the toddler room at the time of Genevieve’s death, painted a picture of a chaotic, understaffed and poorly run business, telling the court ‘we had too many children’ and national staffing levels were not followed and ‘didn’t reflect reality’.

‘There are Ofsted guidelines,’ she said. ‘At the start it was very close. It was not that bad, but it gradually got worse.’

Roughley herself said she had complained about the ‘sheer number of children’. The jury also heard evidence from Catherine Knowles, an independent children’s social work consultant who said that the available floor space in the baby room was ‘not sufficient’, adding: ‘The whole set-up of this baby room was not conducive to a caring, nurturing or learning environment.’ She also said that CCTV footage showed that understaffing ‘appeared to be the norm’.

Parents at the nursery – where fees for 0 to 5 years-olds in 2022 were £60.75 a day – have also spoken this week of ‘queues of parents picking up their children, 20 to 30 people deep’.

One parent, whose son attended the nursery alongside Genevieve, told the Manchester Evening News that after Covid parents had to drop their children off at reception and were unable to go into the nursery itself.

‘We couldn’t see what was going on in there,’ he said. ‘Now we know.’

In court, defence lawyer Sarah Elliott KC insisted that Roughley’s behaviour ‘should be seen in the context of gross understaffing and inadequate support’, arguing that she was ‘a woman at the end of her tether looking after ten, sometimes 16, babies on her own.’

She said that senior colleagues at Tiny Toes, including the Pelles, had become ‘like a family’ to Roughley but added, pointedly: ‘There is no sign of them now.’

Click here to resize this module

She suggested that the couple were making an ‘awful lot of money’ while paying their staff ‘£11 and £11.50 an hour’.

She said: ‘We invite the court to consider whether Kate Roughley was also failed by more senior people in the nursery who, the court may think, kept taking the fees of parents who needed to work and kept packing more and more babies into a room that was way too small, had too few cots and which was dangerously overcrowded.’

She also asked the court to consider whether Roughley was ‘failed by external organisations monitoring the nursery’ since ‘there were regularly not enough staff looking after the children’.

Clearly, she was referring to Ofsted, the government regulator responsible for nursery inspections in England and Wales.

Tiny Toes was first registered with Ofsted, as required by law, in June 2016, but the Mail’s research reveals it had already been running out of premises in Mellor Road, Cheadle for several years by then.

In September 1998, the Stockport Express ran an article about how Mr Pelle had lent out the nursery’s mini ‘Grand Prix’ for a fundraising event at a local hotel for CAFOD, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development. A keen amateur racing driver and described by one local paper as ‘Macclesfield’s racetrack king’, Mr Pelle was well known on circuits in the UK and Europe.

The nursery he ran with his wife became a familiar sight on Mellor Road where, beneath the Tiny Toes sign, an oversized photograph of a smiling baby was fixed to the frontage. An inspection of Tiny Toes in August 2017 rated the nursery as ‘good’ but not ‘outstanding’.

Click here to resize this module

Two reasons were given for this. The first was that ‘staff do not always make the best use of the indoor space available to maximise babies’ physical development and enhance their independent movement to make choices’.

The second reason given was that ‘occasionally, the resources available for babies and toddlers do not fully support their growing curiosity and exploratory skills to fully extend their learning’.

Overall, however, inspector Kate Smith concluded that ‘safeguarding is effective’ and that ‘managers and staff have a secure understanding of the correct procedures to follow to protect children from harm’. At present, Ofsted is only obliged to inspect nurseries in England every six years compared to schools, which are inspected every four years.

But in 2020, an unannounced Ofsted inspection took place at Tiny Toes after concerns were raised about staff shouting at children. The regulator has not published the outcome of that visit.

Just two years later, on May 9, 2022, came what Genevieve’s devastated parents remember as the day ‘our world turned very dark’.

Genevieve had been left crying, strapped to the bean bag for an hour and 37 minutes, ignored by staff, before Roughley checked and realised in a panic that she wasn’t breathing. CCTV footage seen in court showed four staff members then unsuccessfully trying to rouse the youngster.

She was taken by ambulance to Stepping Hill hospital and pronounced dead at 4.09pm.

The nursery was suspended by Ofsted the day after Genevieve’s death. Four months later, an inspection found that it had failed to meet its legal requirements. According to the Ofsted report: ‘On September 2, 5 and 28, 2022, we carried out regulatory visits. We found the provider was not meeting some of the requirements.’

On 27 September 2022, the Pelles appealed the decision to suspend their registration but, before the appeal took place, had a change of heart and relinquished their licence. The nursery was closed.

The couple, who married in 1994, had other businesses in the UK and France including a company that sold decorative stone for building projects. Mrs Pelle also ran a Swiss watch company with her son from her first marriage.

Right from the off, Tiny Toes was very much a family business. Both Franck and Karen Pelle, who had four children from her first marriage as well as a daughter with Franck, were directors and joint shareholders. In 2020, their daughter Grace also became a director. She was, for a time, described as ‘deputy manager’ on the nursery’s website.

Also making an appearance on the ‘team’ page was a ‘Daniele Pelle’, thought to be Mr Pelle’s mother, who was described as a consultant and said to have been awarded a ‘knighthood’ in France for services to education; an honour that does not exist in that country. At least one of Mrs Pelle’s older daughters also worked at the nursery.

Neighbours in the village near Macclesfield, where the Pelles still own their gated mansion, say that before the couple moved out, they generally kept a low profile aside from a dispute with a nextdoor neighbour which turned ugly when, in 2009, Mrs Pelle accused the pensioner of assaulting her with a rake. Macclesfield magistrates later cleared the woman of all charges.

Stockport Council are carrying out a separate investigation into health and safety at Tiny Toes, something local authorities must do following any death in a childcare setting.

Sentencing Roughley to 14 years in prison this week, Mrs Justice Ellenbogen KC said: ‘I acknowledge the ratio of staff to children in the baby room fell well short of applicable early stage requirements but that cannot justify your conduct.’

But unanswered questions remain about whether staff shortages contributed to Genevieve’s death and why, while Roughley was neglecting the child, no other member of staff intervened. How could standards at a nursery rated ‘good’ by Ofsted plummet so quickly? Above all, could it happen again?

Less than a year after Genevieve’s death, a new nursery has already opened in the old Tiny Toes premises in Cheadle Hulme’s leafy Mellor Road, offering spaces for up to 100 children and charging up to £72 a day per child.

But for Genevieve’s parents, the repercussions of what went on within its walls two years ago will never go away.

As her heartbroken mother put it this week: ‘I am dead inside and incapable of living. My little Gigi was – and is – a beautiful soul, the image of her Daddy and the light of our lives.’

Additional reporting: James Tozer