Children: Day Care

(asked on 11th January 2018) - View Source

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate his Department has made of the number of families who will be registered for the tax-free childcare scheme when it is fully operational in April 2018.


Answered by
Elizabeth Truss Portrait
Elizabeth Truss
This question was answered on 16th January 2018

More than 170,000 parents have a Tax-Free Childcare account. Over 45,000 parents have made a payment from their account. Many of the parents with a Tax-Free Childcare account are accessing 30 hours free childcare, meaning they have not yet needed to use Tax-Free Childcare. The childcare service is being gradually rolled out to parents of older children and therefore we expect usage to increase over time.

The average annual operating cost for the childcare service (through which parents access 30 hours free childcare and/or Tax-Free Childcare) over the five years to 2021/22 is estimated as £35.5m. The average annual operating cost for the Childcare Choices site is £8,800.

All remaining parents will be able to access Tax-Free Childcare by 14 February. When fully rolled out we estimate that 1.2 million families would be better off under Tax-Free Childcare.

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