IIn the playground at Sprig Ludens nursery, a little girl tested her waterproofing abilities when it rained and she jumped into a huge mud puddle. Another child had a look of concentration on his face as he walked across a plank balanced on two tires. His little friend climbed a nearby tree.
Filled with the sounds of play and birdsong, Sprigs is known to young clients and adults alike as an incongruously wild island surrounded by a sea of concrete, densely packed townhouses and busy main roads in Streatham, south London. “They would have a bonfire,” said parent Danny Powell. “I love it when my son comes home with the smell of cigarettes.”
But the free-range adventure he enjoyed here was about to come to an abrupt end. Last week, the charity that runs Sprigs said government funding levels meant it was unable to pay staff London’s living wage and had to close. “It’s heartbreaking,” Powell said.
A year after chancellor Jeremy Hunt touted childcare in last spring’s budget, the early years sector warns the crisis is worsening, with more like Sprigs Nurseries are facing closure as they struggle to balance the books.
The policy – 30 hours of “free” childcare for eligible children under 5 by September 2025 – is an astonishing bunny, taken by a country not known for creating new things. Political parties come out of the budget hat. branches of the welfare state. Mr Hunt made it clear this was about getting economically inactive people back to work. Parents struggling with childcare costs are rejoicing.
But the early years industry said the policy was ill-conceived and poorly implemented. Many remain angry at the lack of consultation ahead of the announcement, which they believe is the result of years of the government “deliberately underfunding” the current 30-hour course for three and four-year-olds, and a worsening recruitment and retention crisis.
“It’s like your house is sinking,” said Sarah Ronan, director of the Alliance for Early Education and Child Care. “You don’t build a massive expansion without fixing the foundation first.”
On Wednesday, Hunt will deliver what is likely to be the last Conservative budget before the election. Early groups say ministers have become more involved in the industry in recent months, but the Treasury has given few signals that it is working on solutions.
Nurseries say the problem is that the hourly rates set by the government for free places do not match costs. Mr Hunt agreed to raise prices in November to £11.22 for under-twos, £8.28 for two-year-olds (up from £7.95) and £5.88 for three and four-year-olds (up from £5.62).
Nurseries are likely to get less than these amounts because the money is allocated to councils, which then set local rates and pass the cash to councils. Institute for Fiscal Studies research The IFS think tank found that mortality rates among three- and four-year-olds, adjusted for inflation, are now more than 10 per cent above 2012-13 levels.
Operators compensate by raising fees for unsubsidized time – so families pay high rates during holidays or for children who are too young to qualify. Costs have risen dramatically, forcing many to seek alternatives. As more children become eligible for more hours, the pressure will increase.
The first term of the new course starts in April, offering 15 hours of lessons per week during term time for eligible two-year-olds. From September, the 15 hours will be extended to children aged 9 months. From September 2025, all parents of eligible children under 5 will be able to access 30 hours of work.
The government plans to fund 80% of childcare services by September 2025 (up from 50%), IFS has issued a warning Hunt’s promise of affordable childcare could become a “theoretical right”.
Joeli Brearley, chief executive of campaign group Pregnant then Screwed, said parents were finding the new deals would save them less than they expected.
“We keep hearing about rising costs outside of funded hours, with parents seeing huge increases in costs for food and consumables such as nappies as nurseries look to make up the difference,” she said. “The overall savings are well below what families expected.”
Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Early Years Alliance (EYA), which represents 14,000 early years providers, said the number of nurseries closing was also a major concern.
In August last year, there were 3,004 fewer early years provision registered with Ofsted than the previous year (from 51,147 to 48,143); the number of nurseries and pre-schools fell by 502 from 23,040 to 22,538.one last week A quarter of respondents (24%) said their venue was likely to close over the next year.
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“I’m hesitant to call it a crisis because that word feels overused and it doesn’t really reflect the current situation,” Leitch said. “For a lot of people, and I really don’t say this lightly, I think the system is on the verge of collapse.”
He said many of the businesses to close would be small charities located in disadvantaged areas such as Sprigs. Four years ago, EYA opened 132 facilities in disadvantaged areas; today this number has grown to 41. “These institutions have been operating at a loss for the past 12 months,” he said.
A Guardian analysis of official data shows that between 2018 and 2022, nearly a third of not-for-profit nurseries in the country’s most deprived areas closed or were taken over by private companies, including private equity firms.
Streatham Youth and Community Trust (SYCT) runs activities and centers for local children, young people and adults as well as Sprigs, and chief executive Sylvia Tijmstra said people like It is becoming increasingly impossible for charities like hers to run nurseries.
“qualified [for government-funded hours] It’s expanding all the time, which is great, but the funding provided by central government and passed on to us by local authorities doesn’t cover the true cost of providing good childcare,” she said.
She said other local nurseries were struggling but were limiting the number of funded spaces or forcing parents to spend extra time on top of free, something SYCT would not do. “I just don’t see how it all adds up to a smaller setting that has some kind of ethos,” she said. “In the long term, it’s really worrying – we may be just a small example of a much wider problem.”
The government says the concerns are unfounded. They argue that with a stable workforce, more workers will be attracted to its recruitment drive, while the number, if not provision, of childcare centers Increase An increase of 40,000 between 2018 and 2023.
A spokesman for the Department for Education (DfE) said: “We remain very confident in the strength of the childcare market to deliver the largest investment in childcare in England’s history, and we are already seeing providers looking to expand their services across the country resettlement scope.”
Crucially, they said there was enough money. The Department for Education pointed to recent increases in funding and analysis by the Institute of International Finance, which said average government funding rates this year will be higher than what parents paid last year.
With elections expected this year, it could soon become a headache for others.Labor has promised independent review It was brought forward by former Ofsted chief inspector David Bell and has long been called for by campaigners. But health care providers and parents still don’t know what, if any, changes it will take. “They really need to take a position on this very soon,” Brearley said.
In south London, parents who wanted to take advantage of new rights at their favorite nursery were forced to find alternatives. Sprigs chief executive Tijmstra is desperate for them to get a last-minute reprieve in the budget in the guise of raising pay for three- and four-year-olds, but he thinks this is unlikely. “If there are no changes in government funding then we will need to close,” she said. “It’s absolutely devastating.”
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