Current status: Answered by Natalie Don-Innes on 24 March 2026
To ask the Scottish Government how it allocates national funding for funded early learning and childcare places, taking into account both the locations where children take up places and population data on where they live.
The Scottish Government’s policy towards local authorities’ spending is to allow local authorities the financial freedom to operate independently. As such, the vast majority of funding is provided by means of a block grant. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on early learning and childcare places, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities. Ultimately, it is for locally elected representatives to make local decisions on how best to deliver services to their local communities.
Within the formula for the overall block grant, just over £1 billion is distributed based on ELC-related indicators. The formula takes into account both the locations where children take up places and population data on where they live, generally with equal weighting. The formula was structured that way in order to adequately account for children who take up a funded early learning and childcare place in a local authority other than the one in which they live. The formula also accounts for deprivation and rurality. All elements of the funding formula, the data used, weightings, and allocations, are published online at the following link:
Scottish Local Government Finance - Green Book: 2026-2027 - gov.scot