Early Education Funding

Overview

Norfolk County Council is considering changes to the way it funds nurseries, childminders and other providers of early education. We want to:

• Simplify the formula that we use, by reducing the range of rates we pay to different providers.
• Target our funding to children living in more deprived parts of the county.
• Support smaller providers to be sustainable.
• Reward providers that offer a high quality service.
• Offer flexible childcare for working parents/carers.
• Make sure that the funding arrangements are affordable, within the budget we receive from the Government.

We are required to make changes because the law has changed, and at the same time we want to ensure that we are making the best use of our funding. Any changes we make to the funding arrangements will not be introduced until after 1 April 2015.

Why your views matter

Our current funding arrangements are not affordable and they are outdated. Whilst we have to change how we fund early education providers, we have some choice about exactly how we do this, within the amount of funding we have available. We need your help to work out exactly which changes we should make.

There are a range of different ways that we can change how we pay providers. We have developed three different proposals that are affordable, and there is more information about these below. We have also produced three documents that show the effect of each proposal on your funding.

Once you have read the documents below, please complete our online survey to tell us what you think we should do.