Nursery World - Early years funding fails to keep pace with inflation

More than a quarter of local authorities’ early years funding rates have seen real-terms cuts over the past five years, Pre-school Learning Alliance research reveals.

This is despite extra Government spending of £300m for 2017/18 to increase funding rates.

The early years organisation submitted Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to all councils in England asking for average funding rates paid to private, voluntary and independent providers in the financial years 2012/13 and 2017/18. Responses were received from 112 local authorities.

By comparing the funding rates, the Alliance discovered that in 31 of them (28 per cent) average rates had risen by less than the rate of inflation between 2012/13 and 2017/18.

The calculations were based on an overall inflation rate of 7.6 per cent between April 2012 and April 2017, as based on the Office for National Statistics CPIH Index.

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