The number of registered childminders is heading in the wrong direction. In 2015, Ofsted figures show England had nearly 48,000 registered childminders yet, a mere 10 years later, numbers have almost halved. It’s something of a silent crisis that attracts far too little attention and debate on the national stage. And one overlooked element feeding into this childminder decline is buried deep in rental policy.
The renting barrier
Renting in England does more than eat up to two-thirds of tenant income – it can dictate that level of income itself. Currently, those who want to work as a childminder and live in private rented accommodation must obtain written permission from their landlord, while those in council-owned properties must gain approval from their local authority. On paper, such a provision may sound reasonable. In practice, they’re anything but.
Even though childminders operate under strict rules and ratios, with Ofsted or regulated agencies inspecting the home of every prospective childminder to ensure it’s safe and appropriate, many housing bodies and landlords reject requests as standard, without even visiting a property or speaking to the applicant. They simply see a request to open a ‘business’ at the property, and on principle say no.
In one of the cases I’ve seen, a local authority rejected a trainee childminder’s application on the grounds that congestion around pickup time would upset their neighbours. They refused to budge despite the trainee gaining express written approval from each neighbour (and the fact that some of these very neighbours were hoping to use the childminder for their own childcare needs, once she opened).
This default is a heavy blow both to the sector and those looking to get started in a new profession. Data from tiney, the UK’s largest childminder agency, has shown that landlord and local authority rejection is responsible for approximately one in seven prospective childminders being forced to drop out of training. Likewise, in a recent survey from the Childminding2030 campaign, 14% of people said they wouldn’t explore childmind because they didn’t think they’d be able to operate from their home.
The difficulty would-be childminders face in gaining approval disproportionately affects those already facing increased obstacles. Recent government research shows that social renters are much more likely to be in the lowest income quintile, while owner occupiers are much more likely to be in the highest income quintile. This means that those who already come from less affluent backgrounds are disproportionately held back from increasing their income through childminding. The same goes for younger people aspiring to become childminders, as they are far less likely to own their own home compared to their older counterparts.
