HC Deb 30 June 2003 vol 408 c18W
Mr. Ruffley

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how many childcare places have been created in(a) Bury S. Edmunds constituency, (b) Suffolk, (c) Norfolk, (d) Cambridgeshire and (e) Essex in each year since 1999. [120429]

Margaret Hodge

The table shows the number of new child care places created each year in these areas.

New child care places
1999–2000 2000–01 2001–02 2002–03
Bury St. Edmunds constituency1 128 148 301 206
Suffolk 1,044 1,009 1,427 2,846
Norfolk 647 1,529 1,628 2,579
Cambridgeshire 2,492 2,208 1,807 2,802
Essex 3,544 3,461 2,983 2,776
1 Figures for the Bury St. Edmunds constituency exclude places with childminders, for whom data cannot be broken down within local authority areas. Within Suffolk, there were 282 new places with childminders in 1999–2000, 347 such places in 2000–01, 593 in 2001–02 and 1,040 in 2002–03.

All figures are from local authorities' quarterly childcare monitoring returns.