Early years provision suffers with more closure of Sure Start centres

The Sutton Trust has reported that as many as 1,000 Sure Start children’s centres have closed since 2009, which is twice as many as the government has reported.

An analysis of the Sure Start programme – the national network of 3,600 children’s centres built up before 2010 to support disadvantaged children and their families – was conducted by the Sutton Trust.

The Stop Start report, by a team from the University of Oxford, warns that the closures are creating a ‘postcode lottery’ of early years provision.

Between August 2009 and October 2017, government data recorded a 14 per cent drop in centre numbers, from 3,632 to 3,123. But the Stop Start report finds this is likely to be a big underestimate because there is no clear definition of a ‘children’s centre’ and official data does not keep up with closures announced locally.

The Sutton Trust says that many of the original centres have been converted to ‘linked sites’, which offer fewer services and are counted by some authorities but not by others. Looking at just ‘registered children’s centres’ themselves, the drop since 2009 is more than 30 per cent. In areas that have not had closures, local authorities have had to reduce services and staffing.

By its peak in August 2009, there were 3,632 centres, with over half (54 per cent) in the 30 per cent most disadvantaged areas. However, in recent years, its status as a key national programme has diminished, accompanied by substantial budget cuts, the suspension of Ofsted inspections and increasingly uneven local provision.

Stop Start finds big regional variation in the extent of closures. By 2017, sixteen authorities who had closed more than half of their centres accounted for 55 per cent of the total number of closures. But in areas with fewer closures there’s been a reduction of services and staff, leading to fewer open access services such as Stay and Play and more parents having to rely on public transport to find a centre offering what they need.

Financial pressures were cited as the reason for the closures in 84 per cent of the local authorities surveyed, with 69 per cent of authorities reporting a budget decrease in the last two years. ‘Change of focus’ came a close second (80 per cent) with local authorities reporting a move away from access for all towards targeting of individual high need families, in some cases with a much wider age range (0-19).

Read more