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In line with the April 2025 Department for Education (DfE) Statutory Guidance Early education and childcare - GOV.UK and your Provider Agreement, please be reminded to ensure the information available to parents is clear and transparent prior to offering a funded place and that any charges around the funded hours are voluntary. This will support parents in making an informed choice of provider and ensure they understand when they can access their child’s funded hours.
If you are a provider who is caring for 10 or more children at any one time, please ensure the costs of chargeable extras are published on either your provider website or on the local authority’s Family Information Service website by no later than January 2026 as outlined in A1.35 of the Statutory Guidance:
A1.35 The costs of chargeable extras should be published on provider websites or, where they do not have any website, on local authority Family Information Services. These should be clear, up-to-date and easily accessible to parents, to enable parents to make an informed choice of provider. They should set out, for each setting, the amounts charged for all the chargeable extras listed, as well as the pattern of hours that parents can take the entitlements. Local authorities may wish to ensure providers follow DfE’s template of how to set out these costs and may exempt childminders and providers caring for 10 or fewer children at any one time. This should be fully implemented by January 2026 at the latest.
*Please see the DfE’s guidance document to support with this: Chargeable_extras_.docx
Please also be reminded to ensure invoices reflect A1.36 of the Statutory Guidance by January 2026.
A1.36 of the guidance also sets out the categories providers are expected to break their costs down into to emphasise transparency of how the entitlement should be passed on to parents, including that any agreed costs should be clear on invoices and websites.
Please see the DfE’s expectations for invoices below:
- The entitlement hours (allowing parents to see they have received their child’s funded entitlement completely free of charge);
- Additional private paid hours;
- Food charges;
- Non-food consumables charges;
- Activities charges.
As long as the categories of optional chargeable extras are clear and transparent, including how many early years entitlement hours parents are getting per day / per week, a pragmatic approach to aggregating costs can be taken and every single individual cost does not need to be itemised.
Invoices and receipts should include the provider’s full details so that they can be identified as coming from a specific provider.
The local authority’s updated Provider Agreement (April 2025) includes supporting invoice templates.
Please be reminded that by delivering the early years entitlement funded hours, you have agreed to adhere to the outlined specifications in the local authority’s Provider Agreement.
The provider portal will remain open for the submission of November ‘Actuals’ between
21 October - 4 November 2025.
Please ensure data is submitted accurately on to the system and all children’s hours are included. If you do not submit your information by the deadline, you will not receive your funding during the normal payment timescale. Financial Services are not able to make bespoke payments where submissions have been missed.
Once all the information has been submitted, please remember to click ‘Send Claim’. You will see a green tick when your claim has been submitted.
If you experience any difficulties in submitting your data, please refer to the useful guidance information on Funding and contracts in the first instance. Please note that the guidance has been recently updated to reflect the final stage of the government’s expansion to the early years’ entitlement.
We are continuing to receive a number of submissions whereby providers are incorrectly submitting the ‘2-year-old working family’ funded hours on the provider portal.
Please be reminded when submitting up to 30 hours per week for a 2-year-old child who is only eligible for ‘working family’ hours, that these hours must be entered via the ‘Expanded Funded Hours’ box, rather than split between funded hours and expanded hours.
Please see below an example of how this should be claimed via the portal. The section highlighted in the orange box that reads “Funded Hours per Week” should only be completed where a 2-year-old child qualifies for ‘additional support funding’ (previously assessment-based funding).
Please note: Claiming up to 30 hours for an eligible 3 & 4-year-old will remain the same, where hours need to be claimed across both funded and extended.
For eligible 9 months – 2-year-olds, only the expanded hours option will be visible and therefore up to 30 hours can be entered in this box.
Where changes occur within the setting for example, change to the provision name, childminder name, address, telephone number, email address, business structure and changes to committee members and / or manager. Please remember to notify Ofsted and the local authority using the following email addresses as any of these changes may require a new Provider Agreement:
Ofsted: enquiries@Ofsted.gov.uk
cs.enquiries.childminders@derbyshire.gov.uk
cs.enquiries.groupcare@derbyshire.gov.uk
cs.enquiries.schools@derbyshire.gov.uk
Please also remember to update your setting's details with the Families Information Service, telephone: 01629 535793, email: info.fis@derbyshire.gov.uk
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If you are a contracted provider and would like to receive text reminders when the provider portal is open / closed, please ensure you notify us (and Ofsted of course!) of your mobile number.
Where the local authority has received a mobile number from your setting, this will automatically be included in the ‘Texting’ notifications.
Please let us know via email if you wish to be removed from this Service.
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