North Ayrshire Council gets £26m more childcare cash

Arran’s MSP Kenneth Gibson has welcomed the SNP government’s allocation of just less than £26 million to North Ayrshire Council as its share of £1,043 million to local authorities across Scotland to support the expansion in entitlement to 1,140 hours of free childcare per year from August 2020.

This will almost double current provision and triple that inherited by the SNP on coming to office in 2007.

Councils will receive additional annual revenue funding of £567m and capital funding of £476m from this year to 2021-22.

The sums allocated are based on local authority finance estimates submitted in March 2018, uprat- ed for inflation and agreed between Scottish ministers and local authority leaders.

Mr Gibson said: ‘All experts agree that providing fully funded free childcare is essential to giving our children the best start in life, while enabling more women with young children who are keen to work to do so.

‘This progressive SNP policy is therefore beneficial to both families and the economy. Indeed, at least 12,000 more jobs will be created across Scotland in the early learning and childcare sector itself.

‘To fund this policy, I am delighted that the SNP Government has allocated to North Ayrshire Council an additional £14.5m in revenue, to pay the salaries of additional early learning and childcare staff and £11.4m in capital to ensure we have the facilities available for the full rollout of this policy on Arran, North Ayrshire and across Scotland in August 2020.’