The findings are revealed in A more equal society?, a study published last week by the London School of Economics, with support from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which evaluates the progress made by the Labour Government since 1997 in tackling poverty, inequality and social exclusion.
The study shows the number of nursery places in the 30 most affluent local authority areas has risen by 95 per cent since 1997, compared with only 63 per cent in the 30 most deprived areas.
The report also says that although more families overall were using registered childcare in 2001, the use of formal childcare did not increase in the 20 per cent most disadvantaged wards, and in fact dropped slightly in these areas.
There is also evidence that poorer families and lone parents continue to rely heavily on informal childcare, the report says.
'The combination of the childcare tax credit and the Neighbourhood Nurseries Initiative in the poorest 20 per cent of wards should have insured that lower-income families benefited more than proportionately from the extra places that have been provided. At local authority level, this does not seem to have happened.'
However, Janet Hicks, head of early years and childcare in the London Borough of Newham, which offers 580 NNI places, said she was not surprised at the figures. 'The obvious reason why childcare places increased more quickly in better-off areas is because the big chains got in,' she said.
'In the most deprived areas it's harder to attract private providers, as it's more difficult for them to establish. They would have been working from a lower base of places to start with.'
The study said that in 2001 only one in five of the poorest fifth of families with pre-school children and working parents were in registered childcare settings eligible for the childcare tax credit, compared with three in five of the richest fifth of families.
But the report implies that, five years on from the introduction of the National Childcare Strategy, the tide is turning.
It says, 'The supply of formal childcare places is far from sufficient, but the sharp rise in places since 2001 suggests the Government may simply need more time. The indirect method of stimulating private supply rather than providing bricks and mortar nurseries may be working, but slowly.'
One of the report's authors, Kitty Stewart said, 'Obviously there has been a big expansion of nursery places, but it's much fewer than the Government's saying. They are also much more likely to open in richer areas than poorer areas. It's all very well for national Government to have priorities, but how do you get those shared by local authorities?'
The report also evaluates the success of Sure Start in meeting its short-term objectives. The study found that its programmes have succeeded in providing parenting support and access to good-quality play and learning opportunities, and have been popular with parents. There has also been 'a remarkable reduction in re-registrations on the child protection register'
in Sure Start areas. But so far it has not done as well in meeting other child health goals: reducing the number of mothers who smoke during pregnancy, low birth weight and emergency hospital admissions.
But 'on balance' the report finds that 'Sure Start is doing something right'.
It suggests that this could be because the programme was too ambitious and that attention was diverted away from mainstream services, such as the work of Primary Care Trusts with young children.
