Hackney Council demands urgent national review of the childcare system

Hackney Council is launching a new campaign to ask central government to fix the broken national childcare system. Parents and carers across the borough are being asked to share their personal experiences and challenges they face - from rising costs to difficulties in finding the right childcare for their needs. By gathering these real-life stories, the Council intends to build a powerful case to present to central government, and ask for childcare that works for all.

For many years, successive governments have failed to fully address the challenges that families face on a daily basis when accessing childcare, such as cost, hours, type of support, or difficulty in finding the right option for them. While there is some government support available, it is not always easy to navigate, and not for everyone. 

Unlike other local authorities, Hackney has continued to offer some subsidised childcare in its own children’s centres. However, this isn’t a long-term or fair solution for every family that needs reliable childcare to manage their daily lives.

The current childcare system fails to address diverse, real-world family needs:

• single parents struggling to find suitable options that allow them to balance work and childcare duties
• families not eligible for government support because of their specific circumstances
• frontline and shift workers forced to pay extra for childcare to cover non-standard working hours
• parents and carers lacking informal support options when emergency childcare is needed

To help make the case to the central government, the council is asking all local parents and carers that use, have used, or plan to use any type of childcare in Hackney to share their stories. This could mean their child being cared for in a children’s centre, a public, private, or voluntary nursery, by a childminder, or through any other formal or informal arrangement.

Families are asked to share their experiences, to learn what has worked best for them, what challenges they face, and what would help them the most. This will allow the Council to build a wide evidence base that reflects the experiences of the many, not the few, and help the Council lobby on their behalf. 

The call for evidence is open until 11 October 2026. 

At the end of this period, the Council will bring the stories together, in an anonymised form, and create a report that will be shared publicly and sent to the central government, together with a letter urgently asking for change.

Childcare cannot be a postcode lottery or a burden for local authorities to shoulder alone. 

It is time for central government to step up, and recognise the duty to build a system that is fair, affordable, and truly works for all families, rather than leaving them to navigate a system that continues to fail them.

We want to build a powerful case to lobby central government on behalf of our families, and we ask for their help. Share with us your stories, and help us push for better childcare for all.

Cllr Soraya Adejare, Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Early Intervention

Families can share their experiences online, at https://consultation.hackney.gov.uk/children-families/fixing-childcare, or by mailing the Council.