Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many 3 and 4 year old children are eligible for the Government's offer of 30 hours free childcare a week in each (a) region and (b) local authority in England.

The government set out in the 2015 Spending Review that we expect 390,000 three and four-year-old children to be eligible for 30 hours free childcare in the first year. This figure was a January snapshot and therefore an average across the year. Furthermore, the figure will change slightly year on year depending on the birth cohort and parental employment levels.

We do not have a robust estimate of eligibility at a regional and local authority level. Local authorities have a statutory duty under Section 7 of the Childcare Act (2006) to secure early education places free of charge for all eligible children and therefore we would expect local authorities to carry out analysis to understand their local demand.

We do publish termly experimental statistics showing the number of children in a place. The most recent publication showed that an estimated 339,974 children were in 30 hours places in the summer term. The full publication - including regional and local authority level breakdown - is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/30-hours-free-childcare-summer-term-2018.