Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer to Question 118555 on 25 November 2020 on Pre-school Education: Government Assistance, what estimate his Department has made of the average hourly rate paid to early years providers by local authorities; and what assessment his Department has made of the potential effect of the Spending Review 2020 on that average hourly rate from April 2021.

At the Spending Review 2020, my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a £44 million investment for the 2021-22 financial year, to enable local authorities to increase hourly rates paid to childcare providers for the government’s free childcare entitlement offers: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/spending-review-2020-documents. Further details and information on how this will be distributed will be made available as soon as possible.

Local authorities are responsible for setting the funding rates for their childcare providers. Local authorities normally submit this information to the department through the Section 251 financial return. These returns are published. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the Section 251 budget return for the 2020-21 financial year was cancelled. Therefore, we do not have the data for this year.

The most recent Section 251 data can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/planned-la-and-school-expenditure-2019-to-2020-financial-year.