Children: Day Care

(asked on 15th November 2017) - View Source

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to the Written Statement of 15 November 2017, HCWS 247, on childcare service updates, what assessment he has made of whether the potential number of applications of tax-free childcare accounts has been lower than expected.


Answered by
Elizabeth Truss Portrait
Elizabeth Truss
This question was answered on 20th November 2017

On 24 November we will open the childcare service to those parents whose youngest child is under 6. We will gradually open the service to the remaining parents at the beginning of 2018. Our final decisions on roll-out dates for particular age groups will depend on volumes of applications and the performance of the childcare service. This is to ensure parents receive a better experience and prompt eligibility responses. All eligible parents will be able to apply by the end of March 2018.

We are currently planning our communications campaign, in line with the revised profile for rollout of the service. Our plans include making use of stakeholders, partner websites, government channels and press, as well as some paid for advertising. Our approach is flexible and the costs of the campaign will be dependent on the relative impact of the various types of media.

HMRC, and their delivery partner NS&I, have made a number of technical fixes to the childcare service. The impact of these has been to provide a better customer experience, reduce the number of error screens seen by parents and provide faster eligibility responses. Almost all parents now get an eligibility response within five working days and most get their decision instantly.

The costs for these technical improvements are included in the overall forecast expenditure for the programme, given in the response to Parliamentary Question (105727) on 16 October.

As set out in the Impact Assessment for Tax Free Childcare published in March 2017, we estimate that, when fully rolled out, 1.2 million families will be better off under the new scheme. This assessment can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/652939/Tax-free_childcare_Impact_Assessment-March_2017.pdf.

The number of live Tax-Free Childcare accounts was given in my response to a Parliamentary Question (106916) on 16 October.

The number of parents with a Tax-Free Childcare account is currently lower than expected due to a combination of us opening the service to parents more slowly, and initial take-up being slower than expected. The service is currently open to parents of younger children who tend to focus more on using 30 hours free childcare over Tax-Free Childcare.

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