Childcare expansion complicated by uncertainty over charging guidance and inconsistency across local authorities
Research by early years charity National Day Nurseries Association has found that local authorities are taking a mixed approach to implementing the Government’s guidance on delivering funded childcare hours. This is putting additional pressure and stress on early years providers.
A short poll of nurseries covering over a quarter of all local authorities in England found that almost one in ten councils (9.5%) were still in the process of reviewing their agreements with providers. Responses from providers in 45% of council areas reported having to sign up to new agreements between the new guidance being published in February and April.
The research also found that the length of agreements can vary greatly from council to council. While the average length of an agreement for delivering funded hours was 31 pages, some providers had to sign agreements up to 60 pages in length.
The shortest reported agreement was eight pages long, similar to the model agreement suggested by the Department for Education which consists of seven pages.
Purnima Tanuku CBE, NDNA’s Executive Chair said: “We conducted this poll because we were hearing lots of different examples of how local authorities were changing provider agreements, which are the legal basis of how nurseries deliver funded childcare for working parents.
“The DfE have insisted that the material approach for delivering funded childcare has not changed but providers are now facing a lot of uncertainty in some areas, finding it increasingly difficult to operate under changing rules.
“If this is a national policy then we shouldn’t be seeing so many variations from a standard agreement. Providers are being asked to prepare for one of the biggest expansions in funded childcare from this September but in 10% of areas they don’t yet know the requirements and restrictions councils may place on them.
“Fundamentally this is an issue of underfunding, our surveys show costs are rising much faster than the hourly rates providers get to deliver the funded childcare offer. Addressing this would remove the uncertainty for providers and concerns about additional fees for parents.
“The DfE needs to instruct local authorities to apply the rules consistently and consult with providers before they introduce any new and potentially unnecessary changes or burdens to providers.”
The rush to implement new agreements has created situations where providers were asked to sign agreements the day after they had officially commenced, being given fewer than two weeks to review and agree to new terms and conditions or risk losing funding. We have seen some agreements which go above and beyond what is necessary to administer the funded childcare scheme.
In a separate survey about preparations for the September roll-out of increased funded childcare hours for children under three, 79% of providers surveyed said that changes in local authority agreements had made it more difficult for them to deliver funded childcare places.
- England
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