Holiday and out-of-school clubs to open from 4 July

Giving a statement to the House of Commons today, the prime minister Boris Johnson, announced that ‘wraparound care and formal childcare will recommence over the summer’.

Playgrounds are also among a number of leisure facilities that will also reopen on 4 July.

He also said that the two metre social distancing rule will be reduced, when two metres is not possible.

'Where it is possible to keep  two metres apart people should. But where it is not, we will advise people to keep a social distance of "one metre plus", meaning they should remain one metre apart, while taking mitigations to reduce the risk of transmission.

'We are today publishing guidance on how businesses can reduce the risk by taking certain steps to protect workers and customers.'

The reduction to one metre plus was a measure which the National Day Nurseries Association said would help nurseries and holiday club providers ‘to manage staff and their staff rooms’.

Although guidance for the sector is yet to be released, the news means that holiday and wraparound childcare provision will be allowed to open to children from 4 July, including provision which is not held on a school site.

Commenting on the prime minister’s announcement, Purmina Tanuku, chief executive of the NDNA said, ‘For many childcare providers, the fact that they can offer wraparound and holiday childcare provision from 4 July is something we have been pushing for and could make the difference between these businesses remaining sustainable or having to close their doors for good.’

But Clare Freeman co-director of the OOSA gave a cautious welcome to the announcement. She told Nursery World, ‘We knew the plan was that clubs would probably be included in the 4 July stage of relaxing lockdown. But we are still waiting to see what the guidance will be for wraparound settings.

'Until providers see the guidance, they can't know how many children they will be able to accommodate, or what levels of staffing they need, or how many places they can offer parents, or whether it's feasible to open at all at such short notice.

‘Also, private schools start breaking up next week, state schools start breaking up in three to four weeks. That doesn't give holiday clubs much time to get all their staff in place, DBS checks done for temporary staff, organise bookings etc. Usually this would all have been started weeks and weeks ago. So there will be holiday clubs which normally would have opened, but who this year have decided to close because they haven't got enough time to get everything in place.’

NDNA and the Out of School Alliance (OOSA) have been lobbying the Government for clarity on wraparound care, as many nurseries have been offering this throughout lockdown for critical workers’ children.

Ms Tanuku said that the reopening of provision ‘is a lifeline to working parents who can go back to their usual working patterns and work through the long summer holidays’.

She added, ‘Nurseries and childcare providers have been doing a tremendous amount of work to ensure staff and children are kept safe so where they can also offer additional childcare services for school age children they are well set up for this.’

• Read the prime minister's statement in full here