Opinion: Why it's a fee rise too far
Liz Bayram, chief executive, National Childminding Association
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
This week, the Department for Children, Schools and Families closed its 'Future Approach to Fees and Subsidies' consultation, which proposes increasing the annual fees for childminders on the Early Years Register by 400 percent and on the Ofsted Childcare Register by 686 percent.
The NCMA has been contacted by many members concerned about the potential impact on their childminding business.
For childminders, it is proposed that the annual fees for the Early Years Register, compulsory if you care for children from birth to five, will rise from £20 to £100 by 2010. The fee rise is even more for those childminders required to be on the Ofsted Childcare Register. NCMA believes this is a significant financial burden when most childminders are single-person enterprises with limited income. Our research suggests that half our members' annual childminding income was less than £7,000 per year. The DCSF's own provider survey identifies that a large number do not break even.
The Government says it is removing a subsidy rather than increasing fees, and that this fee subsidy, estimated at £19.5m a year, will be channelled through local authorities to support them in their sufficiency duty. However, childminders know from experience that funding allocated in this way often does not reach them.
I am concerned, not just for childminders but for the families they support. If the fees increase that much there will be a significant impact on the number of childcare places on offer, not only via childminders, but also in pre-schools and nurseries, which face similarly large increases.
This in turn will undermine the delivery of the ten-year strategy, which NCMA fully supports, by reducing the number of places on offer to parents or passing on the cost of fee increases through rising costs to parents. NCMA has urged the Government to maintain the existing fee structure.
