‘Three-year waiting list for a nursery place means I’ll lose a year of free hours’

5 comments

1. Early years and childcare bodies are concerned that a staffing crisis in the sector will make it difficult to deliver the expansion of free childcare hours.

   Parents have spoken of three-year waits and pre-schools of over 100 children in line for a place as the early years sector continues to face a staffing crisis made more acute by the expansion of the previous government’s free childcare hours policy.

   Since April, working parents of two-year-olds have been able to apply for [15 hours of free childcare a week](https://inews.co.uk/news/free-childcare-nursery-bills-gone-up-2997881?ico=in-line_link), and this will be extended to children over nine months from September.

   Working parents of three and four-year-olds were already entitled to 30 hours of [free childcare](https://inews.co.uk/news/free-childcare-life-changing-saving-2998281?ico=in-line_link), but from September 2025 this provision will expand to include all under-5s.

   The new Labour Government plans to deliver the expansion through the creation of [100,000 new places from children aged nine months and above,](https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/labour-tory-childcare-pledges-cost-3101115?ico=in-line_link) by opening 3,300 [nurseries](https://inews.co.uk/topic/nurseries?ico=in-line_link) in school settings based in ‘childcare deserts’.

   While industry bodies have welcomed this idea, there are concerns about staff recruitment, infrastructural challenges and ensuring that these nurseries are able to remain open where others have struggled to make it work.

   It comes as recent figures from Ofsted show that the number of registered childcare providers has fallen by 1,400 (2 per cent) in England over the past year, largely due to a drop in childminders, but also in nurseries.

   Stacey Gilbert, a 37-year-old mother of two from [Bristol](https://inews.co.uk/topic/bristol?ico=in-line_link), tells **i** that she began searching for a childcare place when her two-year-old son was a month old, “thinking I’d get ahead of the curve”.

   She could not find any nurseries with space within a 10-mile radius, and eventually had to accept being added to the waiting list of a setting with no capacity until 2025.

   “I’ve applied to six and out of those six, five have said they’re full, and I’ve lost five lots of deposits. That becomes quite financially difficult, especially now I’ve got a second child,” she says.

   Ms Gilbert hopes that her eight-week-old daughter will be able to go to nursery with free childcare hours from the age of nine months, but cannot start looking for a place until three months in advance.

   “The most stressful” time for her is yet to come, when she returns to her work in[ the NHS](https://inews.co.uk/topic/nhs?ico=in-line_link) from [maternity leave.](https://inews.co.uk/topic/maternity-leave?ico=in-line_link) She says that “at a time when the [cost of living](https://inews.co.uk/topic/maternity-leave?ico=in-line_link) is increasing day by day, to afford my [mortgage](https://inews.co.uk/topic/mortgages?ico=in-line_link) I would need to work alongside my husband.

   If she cannot find childcare places, “I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ve luckily got my mother who can take my son one or two days a week, but even that’s not going to be enough to sustain the hours that I need to do to be able to afford to live.”

2. A friend of mine’s daughter has started to… do really disturbing shit. Basically trying to get an onlyfans, and meet adult men, etc. She’s almost 15. There’s an organization I’m forgetting the name of that’s supposed to help girls like her who are making themselves exploitable. The waiting list is longer than the time until she reaches the age of consent and is no longer eligible.

   There’s a lot of stuff like this. Technically available services that are so delayed that they might as well not be available.

3. We must be one of the only countries in the world that increases the tax burden when you have kids. Child benefit is tapered by an extra tax (it’s effect is a taper on the benefit but it’s a farcical way of doing it) then nursery places are pseudo taxed – the government under pays for their “free places” so if you need more than 15 hours of childcare or are a high earner you have to subsidise their tightness through your fees. It’s a bonkers country we live in!

4. >100,000 new places from children aged nine months and above, by opening 3,300 nurseries

   Unless I’m having a total brain fart on the maths here, that implies that they are building 3300 nurseries which will take an average of about 30 kids.

   That seems low but I guess I don’t know how many kids your average nursery takes. They referenced a new year’s intake of 100 for a nursery in the article though.

5. Even when this policy was first announced it was known that there not enough nurseries or carers to cope with the demand. It’s nice to be able to come up with good policies but it’s nicer to make sure you do what it takes to ensure they can be delivered.