Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure the financial sustainability of nurseries (a) during and (b) after the covid-19 lockdown.

The government is committed to ensuring critical workers and vulnerable children have access to childcare during the COVID-19 outbreak, and that the childcare market is able to recover afterwards to enable parents with young children to return to work. In order to support them to deliver this, the government has announced unprecedented support for businesses, including for the early years sector.

The Department for Education has published guidance for the early years sector on the support available to them: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-early-years-and-childcare-closures/coronavirus-covid-19-early-years-and-childcare-closures#funding.

The Department for Education is having regular conversations with the sector and local authorities about the availability of childcare, and will continue this as we move through the COVID-19 outbreak to recovery.

Our latest collection of guidance for schools and educational settings relating to COVID-19 is set out below:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-for-schools-and-other-educational-settings.

These are rapidly developing circumstances. We continue to keep the situation under review and will keep Parliament updated accordingly.