Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent estimate she has made of the number of 30 hours of free childcare codes which have been validated by providers and local authorities.

The national rollout of 30 hours free childcare from September 2017 marks the delivery of a commitment that will help hundreds of thousands of hard working families.

The childcare service online application has worked well for the vast majority of parents and, as of 5 September, 152,829 30-hour codes had been validated via the Eligibility Checking System (ECS) on behalf of a parent seeking a place.

This is 71% of the 216,384 30-hour codes that were generated by successful applications as of 31 August, as set out in my previous response to the hon. Member for Batley and Spen to PQ 9642:

http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-questions-answers/?page=1&max=20&questiontype=AllQuestions&house=commons%2clords&uin=9642.

These figures are set out in more detail in our ad-hoc statistical release published on 8 September 2017:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/30-hours-free-childcare-eligibility-codes-issued-and-validated.

We will be publishing additional statistics in due course.