Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many registered (a) childminders, (b) nurseries and (c) maintained nurseries rated as good or outstanding by Ofsted have closed in each of the last six months.

Ofsted is the non-ministerial government department responsible for the regulation of early education and childcare providers. They publish a regular series of statistics relating to early years’ providers, which can be viewed from this link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ofsted/about/statistics.

I have informed Ofsted of this question and Her Majesty's Chief Inspector will be writing to the hon. Member for Batley and Spen in response. A copy of that letter will be placed in the libraries of the House.