Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much of his Department’s capital departmental expenditure limit was spent on creating new early years places in each financial year since 2010-11; and how many new places were created as a result of that spending.

In 2012-13, the Department announced £100 million of capital allocations for local authorities to support implementation of early years education for two-year olds from lower income families. Local authorities were responsible for distributing this capital investment and so the Department does not hold information on the number of places created by this funding.

The Department allocated £100 million over 2016-17 and 2017-18 to local authorities to support successful bids to the Early Years Capital Fund (EYCF). The Department regularly assesses the progress of these projects and will publish the outcomes in due course when all projects have completed. Information detailing the outcomes from the EYCF bidding round will be published at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/early-years-capital-fund-2017.

In July 2019, the Department announced the outcome of applications to the School Nurseries Capital Fund. This fund, of nearly £24 million for 69 projects, will help to create new high-quality school-based nursery places for 2, 3 and 4-year-olds. The profiling of this spend will depend on the progress of individual projects. The full list of successful projects for this fund can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-nurseries-capital-fund-list-of-application-outcomes.

The Department will publish the outcomes in due course when all projects have completed.