See answers to previous information requests

1. How does your local authority (LA) fund its childcare and early years services? Please supply this information broken down by funding stream ie. government funding, LA budget, parent fees etc and what percentage of funding each element makes up.
The Early Years’ service as a whole is funded from the centrally retained element of the Early Years DSG.

2. How much Department for Education funding has your LA received each year, over the last five years, for early years entitlement for three-and four-year olds? Please provide this information in £s for:

Universal 3-4 YO entitlement
a) 2018-2019: £7,769,591
b) 2019-2020: £7,823,338
c) 2020-2021: £7,916,681
d) 2021-2022: £7,760,773
e) 2022-2023: £8,003,219

Extended 3-4 YO entitlement
a) 2018-2019: £2,213,128
b) 2019-2020: £2,548,222
c) 2020-2021: £2,724,270
d) 2021-2022: £2,871,311
e) 2022-2023: £3,119,120

3. Local authorities are allowed to retain a maximum of 5% of government funding for the universal and extended three-and four-year old entitlements to account for administration costs related to LA functions. How much of this available 5% does your local authority currently retain?
5%

4. What is this retained funding spent on by your local authority? Please include as much detail as possible.
The element of funding retained by the LA provides a contribution to Early Years Services. In particular, the Early Years Team (which is an amalgamation of the Early Years and Child Care Team and the Early Years Inclusion Service) which provides the following services:
• Provider Agreement with Terms and Condition to all Early Years providers which includes PVIs, Schools with Nursery provision, Childminders and maintained nursery.
• Direct work with settings, to support quality - ensuring that the Council meets its statutory obligations under the Early Education and Childcare Statutory Guidance document (2018)
• Support to settings to ensure sufficiency of places in the Borough
• Training to providers
• Support to settings to ensure inclusive provision for all children
• Presentation and briefing at Early Years’ Forum
• Monitoring the termly adjustments and verifying census information from providers to enable the correct funding to go to providers
• Financial management of supplements and free entitlement, including DAF and EYPP
• SEN Early Years inclusion
• Delivery of Early Years Inclusion Fund Some of the other support to the Early Years’ Team which is required for the delivery of the service include:
• Leadership support
• Data and performance analysis
• Finance, I.T., HR, Legal and other support costs
• Property services etc.

Early Years is part of the Education and SEND Services within Children’s Services. A strategic review has taken place as part of ongoing development and improvement work within the local authority. Following the departure of the Early Years’ Service lead in April 2022 the Early Years and Child Care Team and the Early Years Inclusion Service have been brought together. This has created increased opportunities for joint working with the aim of providing a continuum of support to Early years providers. The reconfigured service consists of four Early Years Advisors, Early Years Area SENCo, Early Years Inclusion teacher and two recently appointed Portage Workers. We are currently commissioning support from a specialist Educational Psychologist. Team supervision is provided by a specialist EP. The team is currently in the process of recruiting to the two vacant EYs Advisors posts returning the team to full strength of four EYs Advisors.

5. How has the proportion of the allowed 5% of funding retained by your local authority changed over the last five years? Please provide the following information:
Year; £total funding £retained funding; %age of total budget.

Total Funding after Year End adjustment
a) 2018-2019: £10,455,857
b) 2019-2020: £10,833,097
c) 2020-2021: £11,071,047
d) 2021-2022: £11,110,929
e) 2022-2023: £11,647,959

Retained funding
a) 2018-2019: £421,000
b) 2019-2020: £507,000
c) 2020-2021: £532,672
d) 2021-2022: £561,708
e) 2022-2023: £549,938

Percentage of the total budget
a) 2018-2019: 4.0%
b) 2019-2020: 4.7%
c) 2020-2021: 4.8%
d) 2021-2022: 5.0%
e) 2022-2023: 4.7%

6. Given the future extended entitlement implementation, will the retained percentage of funding reduce, remain the same, or increase? If there is an expected change, what will that be (i.e. the total percentage retained)?
We will continue to retain the 5% to support the market with the implementation of the extended entitlements.