Twice as nice: Free childcare available to families doubles from September 2017

Alex Koupland, Manager at Plus Accounting, discusses the changes to free childcare in the recent budget.

The government’s pre-election pledge to support hard working families was somewhat contradicted by the announcement of a two child policy limit for receiving child tax credit and universal credits.   

The whole tax credit scheme is notoriously complicated to understand since being introduced by Gordon Brown back in 2003 so is ripe for Tory reform.The name is misleading as is really a benefit and not linked to tax at all (though linked to income).

More welcome for working families was the Summer Budget delivering the pledge to increase the free childcare for working families to 30 hours (from 15 hours currently) for 3 and 4 year old children.

David Cameron claims this be worth the equivalent of £5,000 for parents but it remains to see how the new scheme will work with is currently in place (details: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-32957950 )

The Tax-Free Childcare scheme was due to be launched this autumn to replace the existing Childcare Voucher scheme.  This has now been delayed until 2017.

Of course one of the biggest highlights of the Summer Budget of course was Iain Duncan Smith’s fist-pumping celebrations of the new National Living Wage!

Written by Alex Koupland, Manager at Plus Accounting, Chartered Accountants

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