How can working parents get 15 and 30 hours of free childcare?
Eligible working parents of children from nine months old can now apply for 30 hours of free childcare a week in England from September. The government hopes the scheme will get more parents back to work, but there are serious concerns about the number of staff and places needed.Free childcare arrangements vary in other parts of the UK.
How expensive is UK childcare?
The average cost of full-time nursery (50 hours a week) for a child under two in England is £12,425 in 2025. That's a fall of 22% from 2024, according to the Coram Family and Childcare charity, as the government funded hours scheme expands.Wales is the most expensive place in Great Britain for under-twos, at £15,038.The cost of a full-time place for three and four-year-olds went up in all three nations.
How does free childcare in England work?
In England, all three and-four year olds are eligible for 15 hours of government funded childcare, regardless of their parents working status. Other help is also available, but this depends on the age of your child and whether you are working or receiving certain benefits.Working parents can get:15 hours of childcare paid for by the government for children aged between nine months and 23 months old (increasing to 30 hours in September30 hours of childcare paid for by the government for three and four-year-oldsTo qualify for the new hours, the majority of parents must earn more than £9,518, but less than £100,000 per year.Those on certain benefits can get:15 hours of free childcare for two-year-oldsIf you do not work, you might still be eligible for 30 hours of free childcare if your partner works, or you receive some benefits (for example maternity or paternity leave).UK government: Childcare choicesUK government: Childcare calculator
How do you apply for 15 or 30 hours of free childcare?
Parents can apply for 15 hours of childcare from when their child is 23 weeks old, and for 30 hours once their child is two years and 36 weeks old.The entitlement starts at the beginning of the term after your child reaches the qualifying age.The government website has details of the deadlines to apply for each age group.Free childcare hours are designed to be used over 38 weeks of the year - during school term time.However, some providers will stretch them over 52 weeks if you use fewer hours per week.
What is not covered by the free childcare hours?
The government is increasing the hourly rate it pays childcare providers offering free hours.But in many cases, this rate does not cover the full cost of the childcare. So, some providers charge for extras like meals, nappies, sun cream or trips.According to research from the Pregnant Then Screwed charity, almost a quarter (23%) of parents it surveyed said they couldn't afford to access free childcare hours because of top-up fees.In February, the Department for Education (DfE) wrote to nurseries saying parents should be able to opt out of paying for these extras, "to ensure no family is priced out".However, some providers say they use these payments to subsidise the cost of the free hours for three and four-year-olds. More than 5,000 nurseries have signed an open letter to the DfE asking for the new rules to be delayed.
Are there enough childcare places?
The DfE says an additional 35,000 staff and 70,000 places will be required to meet demand by September 2025.The education regulator Ofsted has warned that access to childcare in England has declined since 2020 and improvements have not been evenly spread across the country.On average, so-called "childcare deserts" have lower household incomes and higher levels of deprivation than other areas.The government offered a cash incentive of £600 to those who become childminders (or £1,200 for those joining via an agency) which ended in March. Childcare staffing rose by 6% across 2024 as a whole, however the number of childminders - those providing early years care in homes - has continued to decrease.While the latest data from the Office for National Statistics shows the total population of zero to five-year-olds fell by 1% per year from 2018 to 2022, the number of childcare places increased by 44,400 between 2023 and 2024, according to DfE figures. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said early years had been her "priority from day one". However, nursery bosses argue the government's updated funding rates for 2025 will not offset rising costs.The Early Years Alliance charity said about 185 nurseries of 1,100 it surveyed said they were "likely" to withdraw from the scheme within the next 12 months "due to unsustainable financial pressures".In April, the government announced the first 300 school-based nurseries, which it says will provide 4,000 extra places by September 2025.
What childcare help is available in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?
All three and four-year-olds and some two-year-olds in Scotland are entitled to 30 hours a week of funded childcare during term time (or 22 hours a week if used across the year), regardless of their parents' working status.Eligible parents in Wales can get 30 hours of childcare for three and four-year-olds, and the government says it is expanding support for two-year-olds.The Northern Ireland Childcare Subsidy Scheme (NICSS) provides a 15% discount on childcare to qualifying working parents with pre-school-age children. The scheme will be extended to include primary school-age children from September.
How does tax-free childcare work?
Parents may be entitled to other support, including the UK-wide tax-free childcare scheme.For every £8 you pay into an online childcare account, the government adds £2 (up to £2,000 per child per year, or £4,000 for disabled children).You can use the money to pay for approved childcare, for example:Childminders, nurseries and nanniesAfter-school clubs and play schemesYour childcare provider must be signed up to the scheme.Parents who qualify for free childcare hours can save in the tax-free scheme as well.How much is child benefit worth and who can claim it?
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Telegraph
24 minutes ago
- Telegraph
I run a French university course on why Britain is such a mess – I won't run out of material
Your 60-minute exam on 'Public Policy Failure and the British State: A History in Twelve Case Studies' starts…. now. Turn the page and read Clarissa Eden's diary entry for November 4 1956, in the midst of the Suez Crisis, and answer the question: 'Do the personalities involved in a given policy failure matter as much, if not more than, the ideas themselves?' Bon courage! For the past three years, 38-year-old Oxford academic Oliver Lewis has been teaching an oversubscribed course at Sciences Po – the Paris university that produced six of France's last eight presidents – while researching a DPhil (equivalent to a PhD) on UK rail privatisation as a 'case study in British public policy failure, 1985-1997'. The source of Lewis's inspiration, he believes, was his father's scientific expertise in materials failure. After earning degrees in History and Politics at the London School of Economics and King's College London – and a short stint in financial services – Lewis was unable to shake off his interest in a different sort of failure, dating back to his study of the privatisation of British Rail for A-level Economics. Having enrolled at Oxford for his DPhil, he won a year's fellowship to Sciences Po in 2021 as part of an exchange programme. The following year, he was asked to develop a 12-week course. It has now been taken by over 200 French, British and other international students at the university dubbed ' la fabrique des élites ' (the elite factory). 'Regardless of citizenship, there is a universal curiosity in a country that has gone from one of the richest in the world to a mediocre one,' says Lewis. 'There is definitely a general feeling that something has gone deeply wrong for Britain. When I tell people that my DPhil is on railways and public policy failure, they say, 'Well, you won't run out of material'.' There has certainly been no shortage of recent stories highlighting problems with Britain's rail infrastructure. In December, The Telegraph reported on an 18-mile line in Northumberland – a victim of the Beeching cuts in the 1960s – which took three decades to be rebuilt after plans for its reopening were first mooted in the 1990s. When work finally began in 2019, the £160 million project was due to be completed by spring 2023. It eventually opened in December 2024, by which time the estimated cost had nearly doubled to £298 million – and only two of its six stations were ready. Nevertheless, the curiosity displayed by Lewis's enthusiastic students appears untainted by any contempt for the country they have been studying. 'I have always been a fan of the UK,' says Milan Wojcieszek, a 23-year-old Polish student at the University of Amsterdam, currently on a year-long exchange at Sciences Po. 'I admire your newspaper culture and the civilised way in which you debate in Parliament. But for me, Brexit appeared an irrational decision in a country where everything seemed to be going right, and I wanted to understand the motivations behind it better. 'I still like the British attitude, but the course put an end to the picture in my head that people from western Europe have a superior intellect when it comes to statecraft. It raised my national self-esteem: if these guys can f--- up, maybe we're not so stupid.' But what about his French classmates, the Pompidous, Mitterands and Chiracs of the future? Did they enjoy a good laugh about l es Rosbifs while quietly taking notes on mistakes to avoid? 'I did not see a visible enthusiasm for smirking about their arch-rivals shooting themselves in the foot,' says Wojcieszek, who hopes to become an entrepreneur when he graduates. 'I guess what I saw was more sympathy and curiosity.' Wojcieszek's classmate Amélie Destombes, a second-year student at King's College London currently on secondment to Sciences Po, confirms the impression that Britain is a fascinating country to study – if not for the most reassuring reasons. 'I've had conversations with many French students who have brought up Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss or Boris Johnson – so there's a pretty bad reputation,' she says. Brexit is often the hook that attracts European students to Lewis's course – although many might be unaware that he stood for Reform, originally founded as the Brexit Party, in last year's general election for the Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr seat, where he came second to Labour. Now no longer active in the party, Lewis adopts a rigorously apolitical stance in his seminars. 'Our duty is to truth, not to subjectivity or opinion,' he explains. In any case, he argues, 'it's too early to tell' with Brexit. Instead, he roots his teaching in historical method, blending aspects of anthropology and law, as befits Sciences Po's interdisciplinary approach. This results in a 12-part lecture series on the 'long 20th century' that seeks to understand 'how we got to this malaise,' what lessons can be learnt for other countries, and whether British decline is reversible. The course begins with the First World War, a well-documented event, before exploring three further foreign policy failures: appeasement in the 1930s, the Partition of India in 1947, and the Suez Crisis of 1956. It then shifts focus to domestic issues, covering Northern Ireland, comprehensive education, the 'financialisation' of the economy, the poll tax, rail privatisation – which Lewis estimates has cost taxpayers over £120 billion – and Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs). This shift in focus reflects the changing role of a state that, over the past 100 years, has been asked to do more with less. 'For most of its history, the British state dealt only with defence and with imperial concerns,' explains Lewis. 'Its culture and institutions were designed to serve a different purpose. They are, therefore, not terribly efficacious when it comes to solving domestic problems. Britain is in a uniquely unfortunate position because its global role coincided with a domestic economy that could not shoulder its defence burden.' This, Lewis says, did deep, long-term damage, meaning the country 'could not adjust to its drastically reduced role post 1970, with the result that domestic public policy has been poorly planned, poorly executed – and at times poorly financed too.' Prof Sir Ivor Crewe, a distinguished political scientist, is the author of The Blunders of Our Governments, which features on the reading list for Lewis's course – alongside films such as Rogue Trader (the Nick Leeson biopic), and The Navigators, Ken Loach's story of Sheffield rail workers affected by privatisation. 'It's hard to say if Britain is appreciably worse than other countries such as Italy, France or Germany,' he says. 'But it's difficult to imagine students in Britain being very interested in the mistakes of those countries.' The Blunders of Our Governments, co-authored with the late Prof Anthony King and published in 2013, includes well-known British disasters such as the Millennium Dome and membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, as well as more niche blunders like New Labour's individual learning accounts and the Child Support Agency spending two years chasing a childless gay man over a daughter who didn't exist. The book argues that the British political system suffers from a dwindling talent pool, limited understanding of project management, ineffective checks and balances and inconsequential penalties for failure. Although decisive governments can make effective policy, it is just as easy for incompetent ministers to make bad decisions – a problem that has worsened since the Thatcher and Blair governments. 'With the best will in the world, I have found it difficult to identify successes since 2010,' says Crewe, who is currently working on a new edition of the book covering fresh blunders such as austerity, High Speed 2 and Covid. 'Even when I ask Conservative commentators, it's pretty thin gruel.' Lewis's course at Sciences Po concludes with the Iraq War, before devoting the final lecture to a handful of public policy successes, including PAYE and Bank of England inflation targeting, followed by a plenary discussion on the past and the future. 'My main takeaway is that, when we make policy, it impacts real people,' says Destombes, who hopes to work in British public policy after graduating. 'There needs to be better research on the communities that are affected.' Gabriel Ward, a third-year student at the LSE who took the course at the same time, cites Nicholas Ridley – the Cabinet minister responsible for introducing Thatcher's poll tax (and the son of a viscount) – dismissing people's financial worries by saying, 'Well, they could always sell a picture.' 'There's a disconnect between policy makers and those who would feel it most,' says Ward. 'I was constantly struck by the gap between ideology and practicality.' Wojcieszek's conclusion is that even a strong political system can lead to bad decision making. 'It reinforced my belief that what really matters is visionary leaders who can propose something unpopular,' he says. Lewis wants his students to 'leave with a knowledge that ideas can be as dangerous as they can be powerful.' But inevitably, he has some interesting ideas himself on how Britain might extricate itself from problems that began last century and have worsened since the millennium. 'I used to think that dealing with Britain's 'issues' would be a 30-year project,' he says. 'I now think it's a 50-year one. In the short run, the solution is attracting the best human capital into politics. In the long run, it's education. The education of our future political elite is a massive burning platform.' Lewis is an admirer of the French lycée system, as well as the strong sense of national pride at Sciences Po, where 'virtually every corridor has a tricolour and its primary duty is to the people of France.' Dismissing claims in a recent book that Sciences Po is a hotbed of woke radicalism – 'This obviously afflicts all institutions' – Lewis applauds 'the genius of de Gaulle and the reset of the 1950s,' which Britain has never had, with the possible limited exception of the Northcote-Trevelyan Civil Service reforms of the 19th century, aimed at moving away from patronage and towards a meritocratic system. 'Our electoral system creates a duopoly in which there's no market for ideas,' he says. 'We've never really had a proper conversation about the role of the state in our lives. 'An absence of vision and standards seems to affect every branch of the British state. It's now at emergency levels. Britain's standard of living is on course to be overtaken by Poland's by 2030. The electorate is not going to accept that decline. Something will have to give.'
Telegraph
24 minutes ago
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Rape victims can challenge dropped cases after sexsomnia fiasco
Victims of rape and serious sexual assaults will get the right to challenge prosecutors' decisions to drop their cases. Labour is to pilot a scheme in which rape victims can secure an independent review if prosecutors are planning to abandon their case because they believe there is insufficient evidence. Under the current system, criminal cases can be stopped at any point if a prosecutor decides there is no longer a realistic prospect of conviction. Under changes announced on Thursday, victims of rape or serious sexual abuse will be offered the right for a different independent prosecutor to review the evidence before any final decisions are made. If that prosecutor determines there is enough evidence, the case will continue. The move follows a campaign by Jade Blue McCrossen-Nethercott, 32, after her rape case was dropped amid claims that she could have had an episode of 'sexsomnia'. An 'important first step' Ms McCrossen-Nethercott received £35,000 in compensation and an apology from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for its decision to drop the case before the evidence had been tested in court. She contacted police in 2017 because she thought she had been raped while asleep. She said she had woken up half-naked, finding her necklace broken on the floor. But charges were dropped by the CPS days before a trial was scheduled to begin after lawyers for the alleged perpetrator claimed Ms McCrossen-Nethercott had sexsomnia – a medically recognised, but rare, sleep disorder that causes a person to engage in sexual acts while asleep. She welcomed the pilot scheme to be run in the West Midlands as an 'important first step'. 'It can't undo the harm already done to victims like me, but it's real, tangible progress, and I hope it marks the beginning of a fairer system, one where victims' voices are not just heard, but acted on,' said Ms McCrossen-Nethercott. Victims already have the right to challenge a decision not to charge suspects once it has been taken, but the pilot scheme will extend that right to before prosecutors decide to drop a case. 'Make Britain's streets safer' Lucy Rigby, Labour MP and Solicitor General, wrote in an article for The Telegraph: 'The existing scheme is already an important tool in delivering justice, but this new commitment from the CPS will extend that right, so that victims are further empowered to question decisions made in their cases, resulting in fewer cases falling through the cracks and more offenders brought to justice. 'Beginning on Friday, the pilot will become operational in the West Midlands. If it is a success, we will look to extend this across the country to support all victims of rape and serious sexual assaults. 'We know there is much to do to fix the justice system. But this is a vital step towards building the system that victims deserve and ultimately make Britain's streets safer.' Just one in 40 (2.6 per cent) rape offences resulted in a charge in the year ending March 2024, up from 2.1 per cent in the previous year, but a fraction of the 12 per cent charge rate in 2014. Labour has committed to halving violence against women and girls and will publish its strategy on how to achieve that this summer. The plan has inherited a series of initiatives by the last government and police, including an overhaul to focus investigations on perpetrators rather than testing the credibility of victims. Police chiefs have pledged to apply the same investigative and disruptive tactics to rapists as they do to organised crime bosses, where they are pursued by police even if victims withdraw their complaints. We can't leave victims to go on suffering Our broken criminal justice system is in dire need of repair, which is why our pilot scheme aims to empower victims of rape and sexual assault to question decisions made in their cases, writes Lucy Rigby KC MP. Too often, victims of violence against women and girls are let down by our criminal justice system, compounding what is already a traumatic experience. I have strong views on the reasons why. Chief among them: 14 years of governments whose approach was nothing short of negligent. This resulted in too few bobbies on the beat, overflowing prisons and a record backlog in our courts, leaving victims of very serious crimes waiting years to see perpetrators in court. In short, a broken criminal justice system in desperate need of repair. The impact on victims and public trust in the justice system was significant. A creaking criminal justice system undermines one of the basic principles fundamental to our democracy: the rule of law. That is to say the law applies to everyone equally and all must have access to justice. This happened despite the work of thousands of dedicated public servants to protect us all. I've met many of them – including the prosecutors from across the country that dedicate their careers to sifting through evidence, often in harrowing crimes, to build a case and pursue justice on behalf of victims. Empowering rape victims This Government has begun the difficult task of fixing our criminal justice system as part of the Plan for Change, in which we pledge to halve violence against women and girls in a decade. To achieve this, we are putting domestic abuse specialists into 999 control rooms, introducing new Domestic Abuse Protection Orders, doing more to effectively tackle spiking, stalking and coercive behaviour. That means better support in place for victims and giving them the confidence that specialists are helping them. These changes will also see more police on our streets, locking up abusers, but importantly – getting quicker justice and support for those suffering at the hands of perpetrators of these horrific crimes. As Solicitor General, I've heard heart-wrenching accounts of women's experience of the criminal justice system – sometimes lasting years – which have seriously impacted their mental health, wellbeing and relationships. We cannot let this go on, which is why we are ensuring that adult victims of rape and serious sexual offences will have access to a dedicated victim liaison officer, as well as pre-trial meetings, so that they feel more prepared for court. The right to question But we have to do more. In particular, it is vital that our criminal justice system further empowers victims to best navigate it. It was Prime Minister Keir Starmer who, as the director of public prosecutions, launched the Victims' Right to Review Scheme in 2013, to give victims and bereaved families the right to challenge decisions not to charge suspects or drop cases. Leading victims' rights voices, like Jade Blue McCrossen-Nethercott, the Centre for Women's Justice, Dame Vera Baird and Claire Waxman OBE, the Victims' Commissioner, have recognised the success of this scheme and that is why we are extending it to better support more victims. A new pilot launched this week will give survivors of rape and serious sexual assault the right to have their case reviewed before CPS makes any final decisions. Currently, criminal cases can be stopped at any point if a prosecutor decides there is no longer a realistic prospect of conviction. For the first time, survivors of rape or serious sexual abuse will be offered the right to request a review by a different prosecutor before their case is dropped. Where a review finds that the initial decision was wrong, the case against the accused will continue. A system victims deserve The existing scheme is already an important tool in delivering justice, but this new commitment from the CPS will extend that right, so that victims are further empowered to question decisions made in their cases, resulting in fewer cases falling through the cracks and more offenders brought to justice. Beginning on Friday, the pilot will become operational in the West Midlands. If it is a success, we will look to extend this across the country to support all victims of rape and serious sexual assaults. We know there is much to do to fix the justice system. But this is a vital step towards building the system that victims deserve and ultimately make Britain's streets safer.
The Sun
24 minutes ago
- The Sun
Tom Daley was bullied so horrifically he received threats of broken legs and was given classroom key to escape
TOM DALEY once ruled the world of diving after becoming an Olympic champion. But in a candid interview and documentary, Daley has opened up on his personal struggles to get to that point, including bullying, eating disorders and the loss of his father. 4 4 4 The now-retired Daley, 31, won five medals for Team GB across five Olympic Games, including gold for the 10-metre synchro in 2021. His long list of accolades also included being named world champion twice, but perhaps his greatest prize now is his loving family with husband, Dustin Lance Black, and two boys, Robbie and Phoenix. In the new documentary, " 1.6 seconds", Daley has opened up the career struggles that have shaped him into the person he is today. And also speaking to People, the Brit has reflected on both the good and bad parts of his life. Speaking in the documentary, Daley says: "My whole life has been about diving. My whole life has been about perfecting those 1.6 seconds. "I spend four years training for something that goes by in less than 10 seconds in total. And I wouldn't change a thing. It's been the best 23 years that I can imagine." At the age of just 14, Daley became the second-youngest British male Olympian when he made his debut at the Beijing Olympics, but had started diving aged seven. And despite having the support of a whole nation, back at school, Daley had begun to feel unsafe due to bullying. The horrific bullying saw Daley called names and even saw kids threaten to break his legs, with the situation getting so bad that he and his friends were given a key to allow them to lock themselves in a classroom to escape other students at lunchtime. In the documentary, he recalls: "I don't think people realise how much it impacted me because I didn't really talk about it. Tom Daley breaks down in tears as he retires live on BBC after returning home from Paris 2024 Olympics "I was almost embarrassed about the fact that people were mean to me at school. I feel so sorry for that kid that had to explain what was going on." Daley publicly spoke about his bullying at the age of 13, but now believes he should have been "more conservative" with what he shared due to it making the situation even more overwhelming and painful. In 2011, Daley had to fight his way through an eating disorder after being told to lose weight by the performance director at British Diving, which was all he could think about going into London 2012. Daley said: "It was the first time where I felt that I was being looked at and judged not for how I did in the diving pool but for how I looked. "I took some quite drastic measures to make sure that the food did not stay in my stomach... "Every time I made a decision about what I was going to eat, if I was going to eat it and then get myself so hungry that I would end up eating so much and binging to the point where I was then so guilty — that I then had to do something about that." Daley admits his struggles were not helped by his internal beliefs about masculinity where guys, "didn't have eating disorders, didn't have any problems with their mental health," and "were meant to be these macho things that get on with anything and you just keep going". As a result, Daley felt isolated, a problem which was only deepened with the tragic loss of his father, Robert, from brain cancer just days after he turned 17. On his grief, Daley says: "I think there was something about when he was gone that I think in turn, probably did have something to do with all that I've faced. "The feeling like I had to face it alone because I didn't want to upset anyone else or bother anyone else because they were already going through enough." His father had kept the seriousness of his illness hidden from his children for as long as he could, as he was determined not to let it overshadow his son's growing success. In the documentary, Daley reflects: "He didn't care how well I did. He didn't care if I came last. He didn't care if I bombed out. Like there was no concern about the outcome. "He just wanted to be there.… He just loved seeing me dive. He was the one person that I could go to to speak about anything and everything and feel like I had someone on my side. "I didn't just lose my dad, because he was much more than that. 'He was my biggest cheerleader, my best friend, mentor. I mean, our whole life came to a standstill." However, Daley says he understands his father's decision to keep it close to heart, saying to People: "Now that I think about it as a parent, it would be like trying to explain that to my oldest son. "And, you know, if one of the kids knew, then they were all going to know. As a parent, you want to protect your kids from anything that's going into that." He added: "So I just think… that's part of the reason for the documentary and like how grateful I am to have all of that archival footage. "All of those moments… forever immortalised by being able to actually have copies of that digitised." Daley's world of isolation came crashing down when he met his husband and eventually started a family. In 1.6 seconds, he explains: "I finally found perspective, and I didn't put all of my self-worth and self-esteem based on how well I did in diving. "I started to realise that I was more than just a diver. [I am] a husband, a father, a friend, a son." Despite the struggles he has been through, the Olympic legend, father and husband says: "You know, there's much of my life formed and shaped because of the experiences I went through — the good and the bad. "Those things formed me and created the person I am today."
