Alongside an extension of the energy price guarantee and changes to pensions and personal tax, when announcing the spring budget today (15 March) Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, finally answered the call to support parents struggling with sky-high childcare costs.

Households where both parents work will be offered 30 hours of free childcare during term time. As it stands, all children aged three and four in the UK can claim up to 30 free hours of childcare a week but this is being extended to cover children below the age of three and will eventually cover all children from the age of nine months. 

Hunt also shared that the government will fund schools and local authorities to increase the supply of wraparound care so all parents of school-age children can drop their children off between 8am and 6pm. He said that the ambition is that all schools will start to offer a wraparound offer, either on their own or in partnership with other schools, by September 2026.

Other measures included pilot incentive payments of £600 for childminders joining the profession and an increase of funding for nurseries to £204 million from this September rising to £288 million next year.

The announcements of increased support are sorely needed. Last week, a new report suggested that two-thirds of UK women say childcare duties have affected their career progression.

In the UK, the average annual cost of a full-time nursery place for a child under two is now a whopping £14,836, with costs having risen by 5.9% in the past year while the availability of places has also dropped.

However, pressure groups, including Pregnant Then Screwed, have warned that while the allowances are a step in the right direction, they don’t extend far enough.

“We are obviously elated to see the government is now considering investing £4 billion in childcare BUT from previous experience we know that the treasury doesn’t give anything, without taking something. The devil is in the detail,” the group shared on Twitter.

Sharmadean Reid, founder and CEO of The Stack World, told Stylist that while childcare provisions have been a worsening situation for years, it is being met head on with the worst cost of living crisis in modern times.

“In 2022 the UK’s childcare system became the developed world’s most expensive. To put this into perspective, in Germany, childcare costs consume around 1% of annual incomes, while in the UK, it can consume up to 75%. This leaves 15% of earnings for literally everything else,” Reid said. “This goes beyond just food and housing, this is a quality of life issue, an access issue and is emblematic of a fundamentally broken system.”

According to Reid, while free childcare for one and two-year-olds is a step in the right direction, it feels as though it should be a given in the first place and leaves so much work left to be done. “It’s a part-time fix; the entire system requires systemic revaluation,” she says. 

 “The expansion of childcare support is a welcome announcement for any parent with young children to hear, especially in the current cost of living crisis where some families are having to make difficult decisions on how they put food on the table,” agrees Gemma McCall, CEO and co-founder of Culture Shift.

“On top of this, making childcare more accessible is vital because too often parents have to make do with balancing their career commitments with their childcare needs. But making do is archaic, especially for women who want to have the opportunity to develop in their careers.”

It’s clear that free childcare hours for young children is a massive positive for working parents and will bring about more flexibility and working options for mothers and fathers who are keen to work and raise a family in tandem. But has this move come too late for the 1.7 million mothers in the UK who can’t work?

As Reid notes: “The bottom line is parents can’t work without childcare. This is a socio-economic issue that is woven into a larger tapestry of systemic biases faced by women. Investment in childcare is a logical and vital step to boosting the UK’s economy.”

Images: Getty