Nursery funding (FOI)

​Request

Further to the Freedom of Information request entitled 'Childcare Funding' (issue date 6 May 2016) please advise whether a full economic impact assessment has been undertaken in respect of the proposed (or now amended) cuts to Childcare Funding. If any analysis has been completed, please release it for inspection.

For the avoidance of doubt, one would expect this to go a step further than the 'Total saving before costs' noted in the aforementioned FOI request. It may cover issues such as:

• estimate of fall in nursery uptake;

• consequential fall in nursery employment and therefore tax revenues, from reduced employment and private sector nursery dividends, and increased social security costs;

• estimate of number of individuals who will give up work or reduce hours to care for their children, the consequential direct and indirect fall in tax and social security revenue;

• estimated cost of administering the regime (including but not limited to additional staffing and amending computer systems). If no additional Government staffing will be required, an estimate of how much time and at what grades existing civil servants will spend administering the regime. What duties they would be foregoing to undertake this work and how they would be covered;

• sectors in which impacted families work and whether there is sufficient domestic resource to take up any working positions vacated, or whether additional inward migration will be required.

Response

An economic impact assessment which addresses these issues has not been undertaken. 

Therefore, this information is not held by the Education Department.