Nursery World - New NOF record for out-of-school

The New Opportunities Fund's latest round of awards, totalling 36m, will bring the number of out-of-school childcare places it has backed close to half a million and create more than 5,000 jobs throughout the UK. The NOF, the biggest distributor of National Lottery cash for good causes, has handed out more than 236m through 4,355 awards to various projects since the out-of-school childcare programme was launched four years ago.

The NOF, the biggest distributor of National Lottery cash for good causes, has handed out more than 236m through 4,355 awards to various projects since the out-of-school childcare programme was launched four years ago.

NOF chair Baroness Pitkeathley said the programme was intended to complement the national childcare strategy and create 432,500 new childcare places across the UK by 2003.

'To increase childcare capacity to this level in under four years was a huge challenge and it required large-scale infrastructure development, new planning processes, new workers, training, regulation and inspection arrangements and quality standards,' she said.

Last week's announcement took the number of out-of-school childcare places backed by the fund to 495,577.

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