5,000 signatures reached
To: The Government
Payments for parents instead of 30 hours 'free' childcare
_in_the_crawling_race.JPG)
In September the Government is planning to give parents of eligible 3 and 4 year olds 30 hours 'free' childcare.
Sadly, whoever did the sums got it wrong by a couple of BILLION. They also underestimated how many children would be eligible by approximately 110,000.
In short, the Government can’t afford it. For example, in Warwickshire they plan to pay providers (nurseries, childminders etc) £3.77 per hour for a service that costs us about £5.20 per hour to provide.
This will put many childcare businesses out of business – especially as they are also simultaneously doubling our business rates, increasing the national minimum wage and enforcing pension auto enrolment.
We are proposing that instead of introducing the 30 hours ‘free’ childcare scheme, they give parents of 3 and 4 year olds a childcare credit or contribution to the same value (around £5k to £6k per annum) into their Tax Free Childcare scheme on-line account. Both schemes have exactly the same eligibility and only pay out to eligible childcare providers. The credit/contribution could be ring fenced within on-line accounts to spend with the eligible years or lose.
Why is this important?
Parents would have much more flexibility to ‘buy’ the childcare they required rather than be restricted to only using two or three hour bands with a morning or afternoon session with childcare settings, which is what currently happens with the ’15 free hours’ scheme and will continue with the ’30 free hours’ scheme. It has to be operated like this as childcare businesses loose so much money subsidising 'free' childcare; it's the only way we can survive financially.
Giving parents this option would save millions of government pounds on employing a league of officials within the 150 local authorities to administer this very complicated and overly bureaucratic ‘free hours’ scheme which is full of forms and red tape, as well as duplicates some of the work of Ofsted.
This is a win-win approach for everyone – parents get the child care they need at the times they want it; and childcare providers will still be in business to do their job so parents can go to work and be economically active.
Please sign our petition to show your support for a common sense scheme for working parents of 3 and 4 year olds.
