Parents across England are facing a chronic shortage of places to take care of their young children, as providers struggle to keep up with rising costs and recruitment issues.
(Bloomberg) — Parents across England are facing a chronic shortage of places to take care of their young children, as providers struggle to keep up with rising costs and recruitment issues.
Only half of local areas report that they have enough provision for children under two, a decrease of seven percentage points since 2022, according to new data from children’s charity Coram released Thursday. That figure falls to just 28% in outer London.
The average price of 50 hours of nursery care a week for a child under the age of two is £285 in Great Britain, the annual Coram survey found. Providers are reducing the number of “free hours” places they can provide, and 48% of local authorities said staff numbers had been cut. The charity urged the government to create a “simpler and more efficient system.”
The figures put further pressure on the government ahead of next week’s budget statement to address the woes of parents and child care providers. The UK has one of the most unaffordable child care systems in the OECD, pricing a growing number of women out of the workforce.
Gender equality charity the Women’s Budget Group said this week that the government needs to boost funding for the sector by £1.75 billion ($2.1 billion) to adequately support providers and help manage rising prices.
Neil Leitch, chief executive officer of educational charity the Early Years Alliance said in a statement that the figures show the UK system is “fundamentally broken” and the government knows that. “How many more families will be priced out of the early years system before the government admits there is a problem?”
Election Battleground
Bridget Phillipson, education spokesperson for the opposition Labour Party, said on Thursday that child care will be “central” to the next general election. “Family is the fight ahead,” she said. “What we need is not tinkering, but a bold and ambitious vision of how things can be better.”
Currently, all three and four-year-olds in England are entitled to 15 funded hours of child care per week during term time, rising to 30 for those with working parents. But many parents pay a large amount of extra fees each month to nurseries and childminders, particularly as costs have risen for providers.
With child care costs rising up the agenda ahead of the March 15 budget, and a general election expected next year, Keir Starmer’s Labour sees an opportunity. Branding Labour the “party of the family,” Phillipson told how she had learned lessons on child care from visits to Estonia and Australia.
UK’s Exorbitant Child-Care Costs Emerge as a Top Political Issue
In a speech to Onward, a center-right think take, Phillipson said that the average cost of an hour of child care for a two-year-old is now 14% higher than in 2018.
“The child care model the Conservatives have built fails everyone, denying parents the ability to work the jobs they’d like, to give their children the opportunities they’d like, and is not of the quality that staff want to provide,” she said.
A Department for Education spokesperson said the government has spent more than £20 billion over the past five years on setting up the current system. “We recognize that families and early years providers across the country are facing financial pressures,” they said.
In a Wednesday briefing, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that inflation meant increases in funding have “lagged behind the rise in providers’ costs.”
The IFS also said the “complexity” of the issue made it difficult for parents to work out what they were entitled to, and harder for policy makers to introduce coherent reforms.
No Big Childcare Moves Expected in UK Budget, KPMG Says
Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt is under pressure to address the high costs in his budget on March 15. though he is expected to keep spending in check. Suggested reforms include an overhaul of the ratio of carers to children, and so-called “tax-free child care” support to give working families easier access to a subsidy.
(Updates with more detail from Coram report, Phillipson’s speech)
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