Nursery World - Early end to subsidised childcare tax credits scheme costs parents dear

Parents on a pilot scheme to help lower-income families with their childcare costs have been told they will have to pay back 500 because the pilot is ending in September, nine months earlier than planned.

Michelle Burke from Barnet, London, a single parent whose eight-year-old son has Asperger's syndrome, told Nursery World she has been told to pay back the money she was given as an advance towards childcare costs.

The two-year Childcare Affordability Pilot is run by HMRC and funded by the Child Poverty Unit and was designed to test out different ways of accessing the childcare element of tax credits (News, 25 February 2009).

Ministers decided on 29 June to stop two of the three strands of the pilot: one that offered families 100 per cent of their childcare costs paid by HMRC and another that paid families actual costs rather than average costs. Parents on the actual costs pilot were given a £500 advance to help them arrange childcare.

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