Keynote Scottish Government programme providing 1140 hours of free childcare is 'beginning to fail' in the Highlands amid a stand-off over funding between Highland Council private nurseries as Ankerville nursery owner Carol MacRae says 'the problem is the local authority is dictating the funding rate while at the same time they are our competitors'
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A KEYNOTE Scottish Government programme providing 1140 hours of free early learning and childcare (ELC) is “beginning to fail” in the Highlands amid a stand-off over funding between private nurseries and Highland Council.
Nursery owners and managers say they are facing a “grave threat” because the SNP-Independent council administration froze fees which childcare providers say amounts to a 34 per cent cut in funding.
The Lib Dem and Tory groups challenged the move but a majority agreed that the rates for ELC would stay at £5.43 an hour for the 51 funded partner providers plus 28 commissioned childminders.
The Scottish Government provides ring-fenced cash but the share for private nurseries is £7.5 million annually and those nurseries believe the council pays more to its own facilities than to those in the private sector.
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Ahead of the meeting, members were emailed the concerns of 10 ELC providers from Tain, Dingwall, Beauly, Tore, Culloden and Inverness who slammed the local authority for choosing to unilaterally “dictate our funding rate”.
Carol MacRae whose nursery Ankerville has facilities in Alness and Tain said providers are seeing a “mass exodus” of staff to council nurseries, arguing funding allocations are fundamentally unfair.
“The problem is the local authority are dictating the funding rate while at the same time they are our competitors and I think that the Scottish Government really needs to take the power away from local authorities,” she said.
“We can’t pay them the same rate as the local authority staff so we lose a huge chunk of our staff that we have trained who then move on to local authority nurseries.”
Conservative group co-leader Helen Crawford said: “Our ELC partners provide quality early learning childcare to over 1600 children in our region. The Highland Council does not have the capacity to provide that care so it’s vital that our ELC partners continue to be robust.
“The reason that this sector matters is that it provides the sort of wrap-around care that allows hard-working families to get out and work. If we pull the rug out from under their feet, we are literally saying to hard-working families, who are economically active, that we don’t really care all that much about you.”
Council bosses, like education committee chairman John Finlayson (above), say no final decision has been taken and the matter remains under review but that there would be no increase due to the financial crisis the council is enduring.
“No one more than I would like to get more resources and funding to all our services and certainty to all our education settings and partner settings. As has already been highlighted, the council is faced with a £9.6 million overspend in the current year and the possible £41 million gap between 2023/24 and, because of this, it’s not possible to consider recommendations relating to recurring funding at this stage because we have to address the current financial crisis.
“So the reality is that ELC partner centres did receive an interim uplift last year – the council agreed that in 2021 – what the council cannot do at this time is commit to further uplifts in light of the financial crisis that we are discussing. And let’s remember, it is a crisis.”
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Local authorities are responsible for setting sustainable rates for the delivery of funded early learning and childcare in 2022-23. Joint Scottish Government and COSLA guidance is clear that rates should reflect the costs of delivery, provide scope for reinvestment and enable private and third sector services to pay at least the Real Living Wage to staff.”
