Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 13 March 2018 to Question 131381 on Children: Day care, for which local authority and for what reasons that disapplication was approved.

My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State agreed to a request from Birmingham local authority to disapply the Finance Regulations so that funding rates allocated to their maintained nursery schools could be changed part way through the 2017-18 financial year.

The request had support from the early years sector and the schools forum and had undergone proper consultation. The change to the method of allocating funding would have complied with the Schools and Early Years Finance (England) Regulations, if it had been decided before the start of the financial year.