CYP Now - Two-year-old entitlement to be funded by cut to Early Intervention Grant

Hundreds of millions of pounds allocated to fund free nursery places will be deducted from the Early Intervention Grant, reducing local authority children's services budgets across the country, it has emerged.

Up until now, funding for the free entitlement has been distributed to local authorities through the Early Intervention Grant. But from 2013, the money will be transferred to the Dedicated Schools Grant, meaning that councils have no flexibility over how to use the cash.

Details buried in a government document meanwhile revealed that the government is planning to hold back £150m from the Early Intervention Grant in 2013/14 and 2014/15. It is not yet known why this money is being held back.

Labour MP Graham Allen – the author of two government-backed reports on early intervention – has written to the Prime Minister warning that the decision to remove funding for the two-year-old entitlement from the Early Intervention Grant would make the delivery of preventative children's services work “much harder if not impossible”.

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