CEY0020

Written evidence submitted by Amberley Nursery & Forest School

 

I am the owner of Amberley Nursery & Forest School, in Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex, since 2001. More history etc is at www.amberleynursery.co.uk I have submitted a response because if nothing changes, I fear the entire Early years sector will fail.  Providers are on their knees, underfunded, undervalued, overworked, ignored by the constant procession of Early Years ministers that have no clue on Early Years. The most important years of a child’s life.

 

Entitlements

Current provision is predominantly privately owned and operated, with some charities, CIC’s and schools. The supply for most private settings is ages 0-4, all year round, schools more ages 2-4 term time only.  This gives a choice for the working Parent, who will most likely be employed all year round so choose an all year round setting.

 

The current system of 15 or for some, 30 free hours is extremely misleading and difficult to comprehend to Parents.    It is term time only, so if they start in September the 15 hours equates to 10.96 hours per week all year round. It isn’t free, though it is advertised on the childcare choices website as such. Most Local Authorities, knowing they have a duty to provide enough spaces have changed it to funded, in an effort to enable providers to remain open. The Government has known funding hasn’t met the cost for delivery since their last report in 2015 https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/jun/15/ministers-knowingly-underfunding-childcare-sector-england   Since that report, our funding has gone up by 73p per hour, roughly 20% increase. The minimum wage (come April) will have risen £3.72 per hour, approximately 55.5% increase.   You can see clearly from this disparity why there are a lot less providers than there were, with more closing at an alarming rate.

 

Every single day at my setting, a member of staff has to explain these key points to Parents, all because the Government doesn’t want to be open and honest- though in our provider agreements, we have to be.

 

The tax free childcare scheme seems to work for a lot of my Parents that don’t claim UC.

In my opinion, based on my real life experience with my own staff, is that people are better off on benefits than working full time. If you work 16-20 hours, you still receive housing benefit, council tax discount, some UC credits, as soon as you go over that point you have to pay for everything yourself.  My very real concern is that as you are due to raise benefits by 10%, the Job centre, yes, the job centre, will tell people they are better off not working. Nobody should ever be better off not working. To make life even harder for employers, they won’t leave as that would mean they can’t claim “benefits” straight away. Instead, they will force employers to go through the usual hoops of employment procedure and fire them, wasting hours of time in an already busy and stressful workplace.

 

Early Years Provision

I am exceptionally lucky that I have a fantastic staff team. My main workforce challenge is finding staff that are able and willing to work full time. I used to have 10 staff full time, now I have 22 part time staff and 4 full time. The continuity for the children is hard to manage unless they are in the same days as their staff member.  Once qualified my team are paid above the minimum wage, but not as much as they deserve; not just caring, educating, supporting, encouraging, motivating the children in our care, but also doing 2 year checks in place of health visitors, reporting to social services, the LADO, safeguarding, mediating with Parents battling for custody.    

Covid 19 has changed the entire country, with fear tactics employed to devastating effect.  Most people seem depressed, sad, scared to put the heating on with the price of everything going up.

The SEND provision is under a huge amount of pressure. We see more children with S+L needs, developmental delay, behavioural issues etc and we are not getting enough support. We can and do fill in the 15 page forms, with the same question reworded to seemingly try and catch people out and enable funding to be rejected. The SEND team are overloaded with the sheer volume of children needing support, but are trying their best.

If a child is in a setting, they are socialising, relationship problem solving, preparing them for school.     However, at 4 years of age, as the research has shown us time after time, school should be ready for the child, not the child ready for school.    The EYFS is through play for a reason, but as the school is judged financially on results they start formal school early.  We know this is wrong.    They are judged and tested to pigeon hole them and stress them out. Their creative juices are then stifled with art projects for example that have to look identical. To really enhance our children’s futures, this has to stop. Now.

 

Sure start centres, family hubs, they all went when their over funding ran out. They ran many hundreds of thousands over budget every, single, year. Never making money. Always bailed out by the tax payer.     They also didn’t attract the clientele they were designed for, the uptake from disadvantaged families locally was minimal. It was the local better off families attracted by the shiny new setting with its expensive equipment.   All that money would have been better off added to the EYEE funding money paid to current providers, keeping them in business.

 

If you actually want to increase provider numbers, or at the very least keep more of the current providers in business, I suggest the following;

 

Exempt us from business rates- set to be increasing for me to £1k per month

Protect our utility cost- my gas and electric are due to go from £4k pa to £18k pa.   Eighteen thousand pounds a year! I can’t have the lights off. I can’t have the heating off. 

The EYEE funding income you know isn’t sufficient, should not be subject to tax as an income on the P+L

Allow us to claim back VAT on purchases.     

 

Just these small steps would limit fee increases, though with the 9.5% rise in NLW as rise in April is inevitable.   The hourly rate isn’t just 9.5% though of course: there’s the relevant increase in holiday cover costs, my NI, my tax for employing them, pension, staff training etc.

 

Below is the graph I made for my MP Huw Merriman in 2019 when the 30 hours came in. You can see that way back in 2011, the funding money was approximately our hourly rate. It has barely moved, unlike every other single cost I have.    I am terrified of putting up my prices, pricing myself out of the market, however if I don’t then my business will close, leaving parents without childcare, my staff without work.

I really hope this consultation has a positive effect, it is crunch time for childcare providers; be they Childminders, Pre-schools, Nurseries, whatever.

 

December 2022