Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of childcare places in rural communities.

High quality, affordable early education and childcare is essential to ensuring that all our children get the best start in life.

The department recognises that there are differences in the availability of childcare depending on where you live.

The latest data from the Office for National Statistics and Ofsted shows variations in the level of access to childcare places across the country, with the most deprived local authorities and rural areas the most likely to be areas that have faced low childcare accessibility over time. The data is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/changes-to-access-to-childcare-in-england/commentary-changes-in-access-to-childcare-in-england.

The government has committed to working with the sector to embed early years within the wider education system, and to find new ways to shift the early education system to better support parents in poorer and rural areas. This starts with the plan to utilise unused space in primary schools to create much needed places in 3,000 nurseries, working in partnership with all parts of the sector and local authorities.

Under Section 6 of the Childcare Act 2006, local authorities are responsible for ensuring that the provision of childcare is sufficient to meet the requirements of parents in their area. Part B of the 'Early education and childcare' statutory guidance for local authorities highlights that local authorities are required to report annually to elected council members on how they are meeting their duty to secure sufficient childcare, and to make this report available and accessible to parents. The department has regular contact with each local authority in England about their sufficiency of childcare and any issues they are facing

Where local authorities report sufficiency challenges, the department discusses what action the local authority is taking to address those issues and, where needed, support the local authority with any specific requirements through our childcare sufficiency support contract. We have recently launched a termly local authority readiness self assessment tool, which is intended to enable local authorities to gauge their progress as we move towards rollout. This will enable the department to work with local authorities to address issues as they emerge.