Childcare costs rose by 19% last year, says parenting website
13/01/2014
The cost of having your child cared for while you work rose by 19% year-on-year to December 2013, according to parenting website, findababysitter.com.
The figure, which is derived from data collected from a pool of 231,000 nannies, childminders and other professionals, highlights the extent to which parents are being put under increasing financial pressure. Childcare prices have been rising now for more than a decade, and Labour says that cost increases at this level are harming the economy, with shadow children’s minister, Lucy Powell saying that childcare costs “lock parents who want to get back to work out of the jobs market”.
The cost of hiring a nanny sowed the biggest increase, with prices per hour rising from an average of £6.59 in 2012 to £8.53 in 2013, a total increase of 25%.
However, the Department for Education has said that childcare costs are stabilising after more than a decade of rising prices. Recently, it increased free childcare for all three and four-year-olds from 12.5 to 15 hours a week, and also introduced support for families on a low income, with two-year-old children.
Tax-free childcare in another initiative which is set to be introduced, under which “all eligible families receive up to £1,200 towards each child’s childcare costs”, while the Department for Education says it is also “meeting up to 70% of childcare costs for low to middle-income families through tax credits”.
Despite this, Tom Farrow, chief executive of findababysitter.com, the website which conducted the research, said childcare is becoming “incrementally harder for parents each year”
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