Tax-Free Childcare will be available to millions of working families across the UK, and over time it will replace childcare vouchers, which will close to new entrants from April 2018. Voucher schemes
remain open to existing members.
Eligible parents with children under 12 (under 17 for disabled children) will be able to set up an
online childcare account to pay their childcare providers directly. For every £8 parents pay in, the
Government will add £2, up to a maximum contribution of £2,000 per child, per year (£4,000 per
year for disabled children). To qualify, parents must be in work, this includes self-employment, and
each expected to work a minimum of 16 hours per week and earn no more than £100,000 per year.
Using the Childcare Checker, parents will be able to find out which providers have signed up in their
area. The scheme will gradually become available to different age groups from 28 April 2017 with all
eligible parents being able to access the scheme by the end of 2017.
Parents who have registered with the ‘keep me updated’ tool will be notified when they become
eligible.
Childcare providers have a pivotal role in Tax-Free Childcare. They need to sign up so that parents
can use Tax-Free Childcare to pay them; thousands have already done so.
To find out more about the new and existing offers, including the introduction of 30 Hours free
childcare from September 2017 for eligible working parents and how they can help you, go to the
Childcare Choices website at www.childcarechoices.gov.uk where you will find the childcare
calculator www.gov.uk/childcare-calculator to help you compare the government’s childcare offers
and check what works best for your family.
MOD personnel based within the United Kingdom will have the same access to these new Childcare
Choices as any other citizen, in line with the Armed Forces Covenant. Since 2013 the Ministry of
Defence has been working closely with other government departments to ensure that these changes
to childcare choices can be mirrored, so far as it is reasonably practicable to do so, for entitled MOD
personnel based outside the United Kingdom. Full details of the required changes or additions to
MOD policies will be published shortly, once the changes have been published on the Government’s
Childcare Choices webpage.
Alternatively, email: DCYP-DCYP-Mailbox@mod.uk for further information.