Nursery World - £600m underspend as parents shun Tax-Free Childcare

Just a fraction of families eligible for Tax-Free Childcare are using it, Nursery World can reveal.

Just a fraction of families eligible for Tax-Free Childcare are using it, Nursery World can reveal.

In contrast there was a surge of applications for childcare vouchers in the run-up to their closure to new users last month.

Government figures show that while 391,000 parents have opened a TFC account, less than a third – 109,000 parents – have used their account to make a payment to a childcare provider.

This means that just 7 per cent of the 1.5 million families that are eligible have actually used TFC.

In addition, 313,000 TFC accounts have been opened by parents who do not necessarily intend to use the scheme. This is because parents are given the option of opening a TFC account when they enrol for the 30 hours.

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