Nursery World - Budget 2023: Big funding questions hang over Chancellor's 'landmark' childcare reform pledge

Sector leaders and experts have welcomed the Chancellor’s focus on childcare reform in the Budget, but warn the funding promised will not solve the current crisis, and there is no detail as yet on funding rates for providers of the expanded 30-hour offer.

The Chancellor wants to boost female employment by increasing childcare to 30 hours from the age of nine months

Jeremy Hunt confirmed the expansion of free childcare for working parents of one-and two-year-olds to 30 hours, to be phased in ‘for every single child over the age of nine months’.

Delivering his budget speech today, the Chancellor said, ‘Today I want to address an issue in our education system that is bad for children and damaging for the economy. It's an issue that starts even before a child enters the gates of a school. Today I want to reform our childcare system.

'We have one of the most expensive systems in the world. Almost half of nonworking mothers say they would prefer to work if they could arrange suitable childcare.'

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