New working entitlements for 2-year-olds

Posted on 18 January 2024 in News and updates

The HMRC Government gateway where parents can apply went live on the 2nd of January 2024. Eligible families will be able to access the new entitlement of up to 15 hours a week from 1st April 2024.

It has been recommended that parents do not apply until mid-January/ early February. This is because codes applied for in early January will expire at the start of April and with Easter being early, some children may not start at a term-time provider until mid-April. If for any reason the parent does not reconfirm, their eligibility would have ended before the child has started in the setting, and they therefore wouldn’t be entitled to the 15 hours funding.

We have also been advised that if parents are not due to reconfirm their Tax Free Childcare (TFC) yet, they cannot make an application for the new entitlement funding until they receive their TFC reconfirmation email.

Our concern is that some parents may have already reconfirmed their TFC in December ahead of their January eligibility end date and couldn’t at that time apply for the new entitlement. This may give them a short period at the end of March to make an application for the new entitlement, so you need to be aware of this as well as parents.

It is important to remember that any code with an ‘eligible from’ date of 1st April will not be able to access the 2 year old working parent entitlement funding in the summer term.

For this reason, we have a parent communication. It covers the issue around Tax Free Childcare (TFC) and parents that are looking to register but we have made it generic so it can be shared with all your families. It also includes some Parent Information Sessions that we will be running in February for parents.

Please share the letter with parents and add anything which is specific to your setting i.e., If parents have codes where they should email them, who they should speak to at the setting etc.

The provider portal appears to be allowing codes for the older 2-year-olds to be checked and we are expecting a system upgrade to allow checks for Spring born 2 year olds to be made. We will advise when the upgrade is complete at which time you will be able to make checks for all children.