answer text |
<p>The Spring Budget 2024 announcement confirms how the department will uplift costs
in the 2025/26 and 2026/27 financial years. The department will use average earnings
growth and National Living Wage (NLW) to forecast how staff costs are changing for
providers and Consumer Price Index (a general measure of inflation) to forecast how
non-staff costs will change. This is the same metric that was used at Spring Budget
2023 and as such, levels of inflation and the NLW were taken into account when calculating
the funding rates paid by the department to local authorities for all of the entitlements
in the financial year 2024/25.</p><p>The department’s methodology and the uplift to
the rates are informed by data it receives from providers and parents to ensure it
meets the pressures faced by the sector. The department regularly surveys a nationally
representative sample of over 9,000 providers to gain insights into how they run their
provision and the challenges they face. The department also regularly surveys over
6,000 parents to understand their usage of childcare.</p><p> </p>
|
|