Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate her Department has made of the proportion of (a) private, (b) voluntary and (c) independent nurseries which will provide the additional 15 hours of childcare under the provisions of the Childcare Act 2016.
The Department for Education publishes data on the number of children benefitting from funded early education places by type of provider and local authority. The latest information can be found in the Statistical First Release Provision for children under five years of age in England: January 2015 (SFR20/2015).
As part of our ongoing development of our 30 hours implementation plans we are consulting extensively with key stakeholders, including representative organisations and other individual providers.
The government will continue to support the growth and creation of new places to deliver the 30 hours funded entitlement through investing at least £50 million of capital investment to support the creation of additional early years places. This is in addition to our commitment to capital funding to create nursery provision as part of new Free Schools which we estimate will create at least 4,000 places.