Other interested people: share your experiences of childcare services

Overview

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is looking into early years education and childcare services.

These are services for children from birth until they start school around the age of 4 or 5 years old, which are delivered by:

childminders
providers such as nurseries, pre-schools or playgroups

Throughout this call for views, we refer to these services as 'childcare'. They do not include services for school-age children (for example, school wraparound care or holiday clubs).

We want to hear from you

We want to hear from anyone with an interest in early years childcare services such as (but not limited to):

academics and researchers
advocacy groups for early years education and childcare professionals
advocacy groups for children, parents, guardians and families
employers of parents with children of pre-school age
local government
membership organisations and associations for early years education and childcare professionals
research institutes and think tanks
third sector and voluntary organisations
trade unions

We want to hear your views on childcare, including what you see as any challenges and opportunities in the sector, and your suggestions for any improvements. Please also tell us if there are organisations or sources of information and evidence we should consult.

Your responses will help us to develop our understanding of this sector as we undertake our market study.

How we handle responses How we handle responses

Depending on the number of responses we get, we are likely to use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help us review them. If the CMA does make use of AI, it will say so in a future update.

We will not publish individual responses in full, but we expect to publish some views and quotes (without naming who said them), key numbers, and a summary of the broad themes arising from the responses.

As well as this call for views, we're inviting:

to share their views.

If one of the other call for views better applies to you, please complete it instead. The following questions are for people with a general interest.

We're also running a consultation on the proposed scope of the CMA’s market study. Please go to our main case page if you'd like to share additional views on how the CMA should focus its work.

What we're looking at

The formal scope of our market study is England only, because funding arrangements and regulations for childcare are different in each of the four UK nations.

However, you are welcome to share your views if you live or operate elsewhere in the UK. We would appreciate your insights and will use them to understand how things are similar or different across the nations.

Extra support

If you need help to respond, email: childcare@cma.gov.uk.

Share your views

Interests