Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what additional funding they plan to provide to compensate childcare providers for increased costs as a result of proposed increases in training requirements applicable to childcare providers and in the National Minimum Wage.

This Government is investing £1 billion of additional funding per year in the early years free entitlements, including £300 million per year to increase the national average funding rate. This record level of investment was based on a rich source of evidence – the ‘Review of Childcare Costs’ which looked at both the current costs of childcare provision and the implications of future cost pressures facing the sector (including the National Living Wage). Copies of the Analytical Report and the Executive Summary are attached.

We are determined that the maximum amount of this record level of investment reaches childcare providers. That is why, as part of our recent consultation ‘Early years funding: changes to funding for 3- and 4-year-olds’, we proposed that local authorities pass through 95% of their allocated funding to the frontline. Providers will then have the funding and increased choice in how to invest in the quality of their offer, including how to invest in their workforce.