Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what data her Department holds on the (a) number and (b) availability of nursery places in (i) North Shropshire constituency and (ii) Shropshire.

It is the government’s ambition that all families have access to high-quality, affordable and flexible early education and care, giving every child the best start in life and delivering on our Plan for Change. In 2025/26 alone, the department plans to provide over £8 billion for the early years entitlements.

The government has committed to working with the sector to better support parents in poorer and rural areas. We have awarded £37 million of capital funding in the first phase to 300 primary phase schools which we expect will deliver up to 6,000 nursery places, with schools reporting over 5,000 available from September 2025 to support the childcare expansion.

There are approximately 121 Ofsted registered nurseries listed in Shropshire.

The department has regular contact with each local authority in England about their sufficiency of childcare and any issues they are facing. Where local authorities report sufficiency challenges, we discuss what action they are taking and, where needed, support them with any specific requirements through our childcare sufficiency support contract.

We also continue to help people discover rewarding early years careers through the ‘Do Something Big’ national recruitment campaign, building on our pilot of delivering financial incentives in 38 local authorities this year.