When Chancellor Gordon Brown confirmed in his recent pre-Budget report a tax relief of 50 a week for all employer-approved registered childcare, the proposal was greeted with enthusiasm throughout the sector, and a prediction from one of the principal childcare voucher providers that its business would increase ten-fold.
The measures, which come into force in April 2005, are an attempt to reverse the current state of play, in which only one in ten employers help working parents with childcare through voucher schemes and workplace nurseries, where the employer must have management responsibility (see box for details).
Stephen Burke, director of the Daycare Trust, anticipates 'a groundswell from employees and unions demanding that their employers take part. It is a nil-cost option to employers but something that every good employer will want to do and what every employee with children will want them to do, and in the process will help recruitment and retention of staff.'
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