A new study by the thinktank Nesta has found that some parents are having to spend nearly 80% of their take-home pay on childcare as another study found an increasing shortage of childcare places.

The average annual cost of a full-time nursery place for a child under two in Great Britain is now £14,836 and has risen by almost six per cent according to children’s charity, Coram.

At a time when businesses across Carlisle are struggling to fill staff vacancies, Labour’s Parliamentary Candidate for Carlisle, Julie Minns, has called for a ‘radical reform’ of childcare system,

“Childcare is every bit as important as education and health in enabling prosperity, and boosting productivity and economic growth.

But thirteen years of Conservative government has resulted in a childcare system that is failing families and businesses.”

In a speech this week, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Philipson accused the Government of simply tinkering with a broken childcare system that was failing everyone, and pledged that a Labour Government would create a modern childcare system that gave families choice, enabled parents to work and delivered the best start for every child.

The Nesta study found that the median pre-tax cost of an hour of childcare in Carlisle is just under a third of the average hourly wage.

Coram’s study found that there were now insufficient childcare places in half of the country’s local authorities, and the situation was even worse for disabled children with less than one in five (18%) local authorities in England that answered the survey reporting sufficient childcare.

“When parents in this country spend more on childcare than in almost any other OECD country, you have to conclude that there is a better way of providing childcare” commented Julie Minns.

“In Australia, a general election has brought in a new government hungry for change. Whereas here, the Prime Minister didn’t even make children or childcare one of his five priorities”.

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A spokesperson for the Department of Education said that they have spent more than £20bn over the past five years to support families with the cost of childcare, in recognition of the financial pressures people are facing.