Alex Chalk – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Alex Chalk on 2016-10-07.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what financial support the Government has made available for local authorities to commission new nursery places in the event of current providers withdrawing or reducing their delivery of subsidised places.
Caroline Dinenage
The Government is committed to extending the free entitlement to childcare from 15 to 30 hours a week for working parents. We are clear that we need to get the funding right to ensure that providers are funded on a fair and sustainable basis. Our recent consultation set out our proposals to allocate our record level of funding fairly and transparently, with the maximum amount reaching providers. We will publish our response this autumn.
We have recently made a substantial capital investment to support the creation of new 30 hours childcare places and our recently closed capital bid round made £40million available to local authorities working in partnership with providers in their area. We intend to announce successful project bids in mid-December 2016. We will also shortly be announcing the outcome of a competition to appoint a delivery contractor, who will provide support to ensure that all local authorities are ready to deliver the required number of free places in September 2017.
