Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to pages 20 and 21 of the Early Years National Funding Formula Operational Guide, published in December 2016, how many local authorities have (a) requested to disapply the high pass-through requirement and (b) had their application to disapply accepted; and for what reasons successful applications to disapply were removed.

The Department received requests from seven local authorities for the Secretary of State’s authorisation to modify the operation of Regulation 22 (the 93% pass-through requirement) for 2017-18. Two authorities subsequently withdrew their requests.

Of the remaining five requests, four were fully approved and one was partially approved.