Nursery World - Tens of millions of pounds in early years funding not reaching nurseries, survey reveals

Local authorities have used more than £200m pounds over the last four years earmarked for early years funding to offset their deficits or prop up their reserves, according to an investigation by the National Day Nurseries Association, which described the findings as ‘shocking’.

Fifteen local education authorities underspent the funding allocated from central government for early years places by more than £1m in 2021-22 PHOTO Adobe Stock

The NDNA has uncovered a total of £229m allocated for early years entitlements that was not spent on early years places during the financial years from 2018 to 2022.

For the fourth year running the NDNA sent Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to all local education authorities (LEAs) in England to ask if they had overspent or underspent their early years funding allocations for places in 2021-22. Responses were received from 149 out of 150 LEAs (Hartlepool did not respond).

In total, NDNA found that £46m of early entitlement funding was unspent by 92 councils, with just over a third of them using the money to offset deficits within their Designated Schools Grant to the tune of £15m. Almost half of these councils used £5m to set against their High Needs Block losses.

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