Families are paying more on average for part-time childcare than they spend on their mortgage, according to a new report.
It reveals parents are handing over more than £7500 a year for childcare for two children, around 4.7% more than the average mortgage bill.
The report, by the Family and Childcare Trust, also suggests some families may spend more on childcare than on their weekly shop.
The study is based on information gathered by the Trust from local authority family or children's information services in England, Wales and Scotland. Each authority was asked to give the cost of 25 hours and 50 hours of childcare as provided by nurseries and childminders. They were also asked to give figures on the average cost of 15 hours childcare in an after-school club, or for a childminder picking youngsters up from school.
It found that a family with one two-year-old child attending nursery part-time (25 hours a week) and a five-year-old in an after-school club will pay out £7549 a year on average. This is higher than the UK average annual UK mortgage, which the report says is £7207 according to official data.
For a family with two youngsters in full-time childcare the average yearly cost is £11,700, the report adds, 62% higher than the average yearly mortgage bill for a family home.
The study says since 2002, childcare costs have risen more than inflation each year and that parents in Britain hand over more than a quarter of their salary (26.6%), more than most other European nations.
In the past five years, the price of part-time nursery care for a child under two has risen by 27%.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article