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<p>By 2019-20 we will be spending around £6 billion on childcare support – a record
amount. This includes around £1 billion extra a year to deliver 30 hours of free childcare
and fund the increase in hourly rates that we introduced in April 2017. Our average
funding rates are based on the department’s ‘Review of Childcare Costs’ which was
described as “thorough and wide ranging” by the National Audit Office. The review
looked at both current and future cost pressures. Our average hourly funding rate
to authorities for three and four-year-olds, which increased from £4.56 to nearly
£5 an hour, compares very favourably with published independent research, which showed
that the average hourly delivery cost to be £3.72.</p><p> </p><p>We continue to monitor
delivery costs and have recently commissioned new research to provide us with further
robust and detailed childcare cost data of under five-year-olds using a representative
sample of early years providers.</p><p> </p>
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