An Edinburgh nursery body claims the city council is “creaming off” £1,500 per child of government funding, wasting resources for early learning and childcare.
The Scottish Government provides funding for 1,140 hours of Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) to local authorities for all eligible young children at a rate of £9 per hour.
But the Scottish Early Years Association (SEYA) claims that The City of Edinburgh Council only pays over £6.77 per hour to private nursery providers, retaining the remainder for what it says are “administrative” costs – and that the local authority clearly have a perception that they deliver the care better. She believes that the council did not regard this as a cost cutting exercise but “really expected that every single parent would send their child to a council nursery because of the 1,140 hour provision”.
SEYA Chief Executive, Sharon Fairley, said: “The council receives more than £9 per hour from the government and it is not justifiable to hand on only two thirds of that to private nurseries – effectively keeping £1,500 per child per year for the council.
“The hourly rate of £6.77 paid to private ECL providers is not sustainable, but we will not see a sustainable rate increase until the government takes the funding away from the council and pays it into a childcare account.”
SEYA claim the local authority is acting in breach of policy and alleged the council wants to be the core provider of ELC.
Ms Fairley added: “The private nursery sector in Edinburgh is being weakened to benefit the council’s own budget requirements. We are seeing clear evidence that the council is on a path to protect themselves but we firmly believe the allocation of ELC funding should be ‘following the child’.”
She said: “It’s been said that the council wants to be the core deliverer of ELC, and we’re now seeing clear evidence that the council is it seems on a path to protect themselves.”
But the private nursery owner said that where there have been offers of funding from neighbouring local authorities where children live in one postcode and attend nursery in another, these offers have been refused except where the child is to attend a council run facility. She said: “This continued refusal will almost certainly be the next legal challenge.”
Cross-boundary places
Ms Fairley said that there are council nurseries where money is being wasted as a result of over-staffing some of the facilities in the hope of getting more pupils. In response to a Freedom of Information Request made by the Scottish Private Nursery Association in May 2024 the council said that they incur annual revenue costs which remain unchanged regardless of the number of places – mainly “building running costs such as repairs and maintenance and utility costs and fixed staffing costs”.
The council confirmed in their response that it took legal opinion regarding limiting cross-boundary places to the council’s own settings but said the opinion is confidential. The Edinburgh Reporter has seen a letter from a legal representative at the council confirming that the Corporate Leadership team has opened up ELC partnerships to “private settings that meet statutory and/or National Standard criteria”.
And at a recent meeting of the Education Committee councillors discussed three options – to open up the partnership agreement process to allow more private providers to offer ELC and so share in the government funding, to review the council’s own nursery provision to reduce capacity and repurpose buildings, or retain the council’s current approach to partnership agreements in line with the council’s Early Years Delivery Plan.
A meeting was to be held on 6 October to discuss some of these matters but the council meeting has been removed from the calendar -although there are now two meetings of the Education Committee in November instead.
