30 HOURS FREE CHILDCARE FOR 3 & 4 YEAR OLDS

The government are committed to give working parents of three and four year olds up to 30 hours of free childcare per week from September 2017.  The Childcare Bill 2016 reflecting the changes has now gone through all stages of parliament and had royal assent – this means that the 30 hours will become a legal entitlement from September 2017.  The consultation on an amended draft code of practice is now live and can be accessed at: https://consult.education.gov.uk/early-years-funding/childcare-free-entitlement

Eligibility for the additional hours will be determined by HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs)                                                        

Eligibility will include households where:

• Both parents are working (or the sole parent is working in a lone parent family) and each parent earns on average:One/both parent/s is away on leave (paternal, maternal, adoption leave etc.)
• a weekly minimum equivalent to 16 hours at National Minimum Wage (NMW) or National Living Wage (NLW) and
• less than £100,000 per year
• One/both parents/s on Statutory sick

One parent is employed and:

• Other parent has either: substantial caring responsibilities and/or disability

Early Implementation

Bury submitted an expression of interest and have been selected as an Early Implementer Innovator.  This means that we won’t be funding places until September 2017 but we will be working in partnership with parents, childcare providers, employers and others, planning for successful implementation next year.

The purpose of the early implementation is to:

• Engage and work with parents and providers to maximise provider flexibility to fit parental working patterns

• Encourage growth in the local market to increase capacity

• Stimulate parental demand for the new entitlement to act as a work incentive

• Engage with businesses to highlight the benefits to their employees and recruitment practices

Inline with our original expression of interest Bury have been asked to focus on Work Incentives so we will be working closely with the council’s Economic Strategy Team on the Working Well initiative.  As all strands are closely linked we will also be testing flexibility and sufficiency by completing our Childcare Sufficiency Assessment annual report at the same time.

Capital Funding

The government are investing ‘at least’ £50m and Bury submitted an expression of interest to the capital grant programme on 29^th April 2016 – we are waiting to see if we have been successful at this stage. 

An email was sent out inviting all providers delivering 3 & 4 year old funded places, including schools, to submit a brief plan to ourselves if interested.

Next steps

• DFE have extended the Hempsall’s support package (A2YO) for another 3 months to support LA’s with 30 hours so we await information from them.

• A poster competition was launched and our winning entry was submitted by the children cared for by Sarah Jones, childminder.

• NW Implementers held their 1st facilitated event on 3^rd May to move forward our joint and individual plans.  Further meetings are planned for AGMA colleagues in June and NW cluster in September.  Further meetings will be arranged to disseminate the lessons learned so far in the new year to a wider audience.

• We had a 30 hour stand at the North West’s premier Business & Lifestyle Fair at Castle Armoury on 13^th May and this gave us more than 30 leads to businesses in the area who showed a keen interest in learning more about the initiative.

• A steering group us currently being pulled together and the 1^st meeting is planned for 14^th June 2016.