Most local authorities in Scotland are paying their private partner providers proportionally lower than the number of hours they were delivering, an investigation by National Day Nurseries Association Scotland has found.
The vast majority of local authorities are paying private providers a smaller proportion of their Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) budgets for the hours of funded ELC they are delivering, an investigation by National Day Nurseries Association Scotland has revealed.
Across Scotland, councils source an average of 28.3 per cent of their funded hours from partner providers like private and voluntary nurseries or childminders. By contrast councils only allocated 22.8 per cent of their ELC spending to this delivery. In total, 23 councils - 79 per cent of those NDNA Scotland could analyse - were paying their private partner providers proportionally lower than the number of hours they were delivering.
NDNA Scotland made Freedom of Information requests to all local authorities to ascertain what proportion of their total ELC hours was delivered by private, voluntary, and independent providers (PVI).
