Directors of Burnley nurseries Giant Leap and Go Outdoors raise concerns about the Government's expansion of funded childcare places

The Government plans to give working parents of all children older than nine months access to 15 hours of funded childcare from September and increase it to 30 in 2025.

Lancashire County Council provides extra money through the Government’s Dedicated Schools Grant to childcare providers looking after deprived children. The council uses pupils' home postcodes for three to four-year-olds. But the two-and-under scheme currently uses childcare provider postcodes.

The directors of Giant Leap Childcare & Learning Centre and Go Outdoors Nature Play & Learning say it is unfair to allocate it for infants by the provider postcode as it does not reflect actual deprivation rates.

Director Rafael Schiel points to the examples of Giant Leap in Coal Clough Lane and Go Outdoors in Airdrie Crescent, which have different postcodes but are right next door. He says that while at least a quarter of children across both settings come from impoverished families, only Go Outdoors will receive additional funding for them.

“All children should have access to the same funding rates to make childcare places affordable and accessible to all parents and carers in Burnley.”

A Lancashire County Council spokesperson said the authority is using the current measure temporarily as it rolls out the scheme and will switch to pupil postcodes from April 2025 once it has the data.

Rafael added that without the extra funding, “The nursery sector is struggling with meeting the costs of increasing wages, consumables, utility bills, interest rates, and business rates. For example, the government funding rate for the 30-hour places for three-to-five-year-olds has not increased in line with inflation and the minimum wage for many years, and this should have been revised before extending funded places to nine-month-olds.”

The average funding rate for three and four-year-olds in England increased by 4.6% in April while the National Living Wage rose by around 10%, reveals the National Day Nurseries Association.

The charity adds that, in real terms, the funding rates have increased by 27% since 2017, but wages have risen by 58 to 62%.

Jade Taylor, senior nursery manager of Giant Leap, travelled to London last month to meet with David Johnston, the Minister for Children, Families, and Wellbeing, to express her concerns about the national "funding and staffing crisis".

“We want to offer opportunities that children might not be able to experience at home, but it is hard to do that with limited funding and an ongoing staffing crisis."

Karen Hutchinson, Go Outdoors Nursery Manager, says the childcare sector faces a "lack of qualified staff available" and "the infrastructure is not working".

She also added that there is an increased risk of losing qualified and experienced staff members as they move from the childcare sector to different industries.

And Rafael believes the extra funding would allow the nursery sector “to pay the fair wages the hard-working and qualified Early Years Practitioners deserve."