Balham Nursery and Garratt Park could no longer be children’s centres as Wandsworth Council consults on the future of the service across the borough.

In November, the council’s executive agreed plans to “de-designate” the two sites as children’s centres, maintaining stay-and-play and electing to “signpost” parents to other services.

The changes would result in about 11 or 12 full-time equivalent jobs going, but five created. Of posts that will be deleted, eight are currently occupied by 10 members of staff who have been consulted on the plans.

Eliminating the sites from the children’s centres provision would cut £1.3m from the council’s budgets in 2016/17 and £1.4m in 2017/18.

The same council paper, the review of early year’s services report, states it costs £200,000 a year to run a children’s centre. According to the council, neither centre is in an area of high need, and Garratt Park has the lowest number of users and a lower level of need.

The de-designation of Garratt Park will be mitigated by a new purpose-built West Hill centre in King George’s Park, close to the Henry Prince Estate, which has the highest level of need, the council said.

Wandsworth Council’s report read: “The Equality Impact Assessment therefore identifies a potential negative impact on children and young people as a result of the proposed de-designation of Garratt Park and Balham as this could lead to a change in the service they access.”

The report states: “Only three centres have been inspected under the current regime. Two of the centres were graded ‘Requires Improvement’, whilst the third centre received the lowest grade, ‘Inadequate’.”

There are 14 centres, four of which are council-run and 10 managed by service level agreements with schools.

In 2014/15, there was a decline of 5 per cent in the number of visits from the year before, with 141,759 visits by children and parents to the centres. In a survey carried out last summer, only one respondent out of more than 670 was dissatisfied with the services at children’s centres. The consultation is open until May 24.