Free childcare places: Race against time for Conservatives to ensure landmark childcare places pledge

But ministers and civil servants are facing a race against time to ensure the key pledge is delivered amid accusations the programme is becoming mired in confusion and funding shortages.

Successfully implementing the initiative could help halt the slide in Conservative electoral fortunes, while failure would deal another blow to their battered reputation.

Little wonder Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged early this week to “deliver the plans exactly as we said we would”, although this was made even as frantic talks were underway between Department for Education officials and the childcare sector to try to overcome complications engulfing those plans.

It remains unclear how many state-funded places for working parents of children aged two will be available after the Easter break in April.

The expansion of funded childcare provision was announced by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in the Budget last March. Ministers say the move will double state spending on early education to beyond £8bn by 2027-28.

But the rhetoric is now meeting the cold reality of delivering extra places for children amid shortages of trained staff, insufficient funding and falling numbers of providers.

Under the plans, working parents with youngsters aged two will be eligible for 15 hours of funded childcare a week during school term times from April.

Tens of thousands of parents have already applied for funding since access opened early this month but many have run into difficulties securing eligibility codes needed to access care - prompting fears they will miss out on places.

Ministers announced a temporary fix this week that parents affected will be posted a code by HMRC by the middle of February.

But as Purnima Tanuku, chief executive of the National Day Nurseries Association, pointed out, it only added “another layer of potential confusion to an already baffling system”.

She said: “We are concerned that this is so last minute for parents and providers who are also in the dark about their funding rates.”

Many providers still do not know how much they will be paid to provide care for two-year-olds as significant numbers of local authorities have yet to confirm final rates – with some not planning to do so until towards the end of March - although indicative figures have been issued by the Government.

These vary according to national calculations on local needs ranging from less than £7.50 an hour in the East Riding and North Yorkshire to around £8 in Leeds and Bradford and approaching £12 in parts of London.

Providers complain the rates will not be enough to cover their costs leading to concerns they will lose money if they offer more state-funded places. They are under no obligation to provide places or could limit those available. Budget planning has been made more difficult by the delays finalising rates.

Although the fee for children will be covered by the state, families can expect additional costs for “consumables” charged by providers for instance to cover food or the cost of materials used by youngsters.

Helen Gration, who runs two nurseries in York and another two in Leeds, says the expansion is desperately needed by parents, with access to good early years care having a “tremendous” impact on a child’s development.

“It’s been a long time in coming. Childcare is expensive in this country and has been for a long time because we are very labour-intensive and we all try to pay fairly and well for the staff that we have,” she said.

But she said the funding rates set by the Government did not reflect the costs of delivering care particularly with minimum wage costs going up 10 per cent in April.

Further ahead – and potentially just before an autumn general election - there are major question marks over the extension of provision of 15 hours state-funded care to working parents of children between nine months and two from September.

Concerns over funding to cover the expansion led to a last-minute decision from ministers this week to hand local authorities an extra £120m although in a briefing issued by the Department for Education it promised to fund “however much it ultimately costs”.

Provision will be further extended in September 2025 to 30 hours of state-funded childcare per week for working parents with pre-school children older than nine months. Youngsters aged three and four already receive 15 hours per week in term time providing individual parents earn less than £100,000.

Ministers claim the expansion will lead to annual savings of up to £6,500 per child to families.

But there remain doubts about whether sufficient places will be available for parents to secure provision for their children amid staff shortages in the sector.

Research published by the Early Education and Childcare Coalition in partnership with Leeds University in November painted a bleak picture of workforce challenges.

It estimated numbers of childcare places in England would need to grow by six per cent to meet demand created by the Government’s planned expansion, with an extra 50,000 staff needed this year and again next year, taking into account expected staff turnover.

It found many nursery settings were unlikely to offer the new entitlements to parents because of difficulties recruiting and retaining staff, with two thirds of nurseries reporting average waiting times for places of nearly six months.

The coalition warned Government promises of more free childcare without infrastructure to develop it offered “false hope” to families.

Abby Jitendra, principal policy adviser for care, family and relationships at the York-based Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which funded the report’s research, predicted further problems with the expansion ahead of it going live in April.

But she said longer term problems including attracting more people into the workforce needed tackling too.

“There are not enough workers to deliver this expansion,” she said.

“Ultimately people want to work where they are valued, paid enough and can progress through the ranks and when you speak to early years staff, that is not how they feel.”