The group, which was set up last month, has started fundraising to cover its legal costs after the Department for Education (DfE) went ahead with the implementation of its revised charging guidance for the funded hours, despite a call by thousands of early years providers to delay bringing it in by six months to give settings time to prepare.
Early years providers have repeatedly warned that the updated guidance will ‘threaten the viabilty’ of their provision.
One of Early Years Voice’s founding members, Ian Morgan, director of Little Ducklings Nursery in Berkshire and Puddleduck Nursery in Oxfordshire, told Nursery World, ‘We were blown away by the level of response over the long Easter weekend to our fundraiser. We have set ourselves an initial target of £500,000, which sounds a lot but we are mindful that we need sufficient funds to maintain the campaign through any protracted legal processes.’
He went on to say that the campaign group is considering multiple avenues with its legal teams, but there are no ‘short-term fixes’.
The campaign is also looking ‘more closely’ at the role of local authorities and how they are treating early years providers.
It comes after a FOI request from the National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) revealed that more than £65 million in early years funding given to local authorities was not spent on places in 2023/24.
Of the 132 local authorities who responded to the NDNA’s Freedom of Information (FOI) request, 75 per cent (99 local authorities) had underspends at the end of 2023/24. Of these, 19 had underspends of more than £1m, while five councils held onto more than £2m.
- Visit Early Years Voice's crowdfunding page here
