Childcare levels a lottery, says trust

Levels of child care vary widely across the country, according to postcode, income and employment status, a report found yesterday.

The best areas had 82 childminding places for every 1,000 children and the worst had only 33, said the Daycare Trust report, Raising Expectations. Day-nursery places varied from 68 to 120 per 1,000, pre-school playgroups from 40 to 170, and out-of-school clubs from 57 to 210. In 1997 there was one childcare place for every nine children under the age of eight. Now there is one for every seven. But in the past year, the number of places rose by only 2 per cent.

The Daycare Trust said the Government's national childcare strategy, launched four years ago, needed reform and sustained public funding to provide child care for all in a network of new centres.

British parents pay the highest childcare bills in Europe – typically £120 a week or £6,200 a year on a nursery place for a two-year-old – and fees have gone up 10 per cent in the past year.One in five children grows up in a workless household, and many women are forced to leave jobs because of childcare problems, the report says.