of nine months just weeks away, Nursery World spoke to nurseries to hear about how their businesses are coping with
rising costs, a recruitment crisis, and a clampdown on charging for extras, amid an anticipated rise in demand from parents for the funded hours.
Recent research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has found that take-up is predicted to be much higher than the previous government initially anticipated.
If take-up stays at current levels, the IFS said that extra spending needed could end up £1 billion higher from next year than originally planned when it was announced by the then-Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in the March 2023 Budget.
Take-up in six local authority areas has been revised up by more than 50 per cent. These are Leicestershire, Cambridgeshire, Dorset,
Bath and North East Somerset, Westminster, and North Somerset.
London, however, is a different picture. Of the nine local authorities where expected take-up fell between December 2023 and March 2025, seven are in the capital.
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