Early Years Funding Entitlements Phase 3

In the Spring Budget 2023 the Chancellor announced major changes to childcare, increasing the financial support available to working parents to help with the cost of childcare where families meet the government set criteria.

By September 2025, working parents with children from 9 months of age up to statutory school age will be eligible for 30 hours of childcare where they meet qualifying criteria.

The expansion to childcare is being rolled out in phases, the first phase offering 15 hours childcare to working parents of 2-year-olds began in April 2024. The second phase offering 15 hours childcare to working parents of children from 9 months of age up to statutory school age from September 2024. The final phase will offer 30 hours of childcare to children from 9 months of age up to statutory school age where families meet the qualifying criteria from September 2025.

The government criteria for assistance for working parents is based on both parents working (or the sole parent is working in a lone parent family), each parent has a weekly minimum income equivalent to 16 hours at national minimum wage or living wage and neither parent has an income of more than £100,000 per year.

In order to help us determine demand for the new entitlements, we want to engage with families to see how they currently use childcare, and how they will likely use childcare if they are eligible for the new entitlements.

We are engaging with families through a number of surveys, to help us plan for each phase of the expansion and to ensure the supply of childcare available increases to meet expected demand.

This survey aims to understand the current and anticipated usage of childcare of children who will be 9 months old to 2 years old in September 2025, and the likelihood of families accessing the new 30 hours of childcare offer for working families if they will qualify.

We expect the survey to take around 5 minutes to complete, and your answers will help us to determine how patterns of childcare usage may change as the new entitlements are implemented. Your feedback helps us to review our current childcare supply and take steps to increase the number of places available should we need to.