Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department has made of the impacts of inflation on wraparound childcare providers and the costs to parents and carers of childcare for school age children.

The Childcare Act 2006 places a duty on all local authorities to secure sufficient childcare, so far as is reasonably practicable, for working parents in their area for children aged 0-14, or up to 18 for disabled children. As the body responsible for the sufficiency of childcare provision locally, local authorities will have an interest in knowing about the current and future demand and supply of wraparound and holiday childcare, including the level of fees for wraparound and holiday childcare and the impact of inflation on those fees, and how that affects parents’ ability to access wraparound childcare.

The department does not hold a central register of wraparound providers from which an accurate assessment of average costs, either nationally or regionally, for wraparound childcare for school aged children can be made, either during term time or holiday periods. However, since the onset of COVID-19, department officials have regularly met with three of the largest wraparound childcare providers in England, to understand the challenges the sector faces, and how these challenges affect parents and children using, or seeking to use, wrapround childcare.

This engagement has included identifying changes to fees during COVID-19 restrictions and following the lifting of the restrictions for both term-time and holiday provision, and the perceived impact that these changes have had on parents using wraparound childcare. This work, alongside survey-based engagement with a broader range of smaller providers from across the county and ongoing work with local authorities, has helped to inform the department’s response to sufficiency concerns resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, and will inform future policy development to support local authorities to secure affordable and accessible wraparound childcare places for all those who need them.

While the department does not currently hold statistical data on wraparound childcare costs, we will conduct a survey of approximately 6,000 parents of 0-14 year olds in the coming year to better understand their childcare needs. This will include establishing indicative costs paid by parents for a range of childcare providers for children up to the age of 14, on an annual basis.