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The Early Years Alliance has written to the Department of Health and Social Care to raise concerns about planned changes to the Nursery Milk Scheme.

The scheme, which is operated by the Nursery Milk Reimbursement Unit (NMRU) on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care, entitles under-fives attending early years settings to received 1/3 pint of milk each day free of charge.

Under planned changes, as of August 2022, early years settings participating in the scheme will be required to:

• upload a redacted copy of their attendance registers onto their online Nursery Milk account, showing the date, child name (crossed out for confidentiality), date of birth, and hours of attendance. 
• note any child who was unexpectedly absent (generally due to sickness) but for whom milk was ordered

Writing to health minister Maggie Throup, Neil raised serious concerns of the impact of the change on the sector, particularly at a time of severe staffing shortages. His letter stated: 

As you may be aware, the early years sector is in the midst of a severe recruitment and retention crisis, with a recent Alliance survey finding that nearly two-thirds of settings are currently recruiting for roles, while around half have had to rely on temporary staff to remain open. This followed a previous Alliance survey which found that excessive paperwork and administrative requirements were the most commonly-cited sources of stress among early educators.

Given both these issues, we are extremely concerned that the proposed changes to the Nursery Milk Scheme will place an unnecessary additional burden on an already overworked, overwhelmed and under-resourced workforce. In turn, our fear is that this will force many settings to withdraw from the scheme, which will either create an extra financial burden for those who opt to buy their milk privately, or risk the loss of an important source of health and nutrition for children at settings who cannot afford to do so.

I am aware that the government has advised that that providers can upload a redacted version of electronic registers, but even this will take time that these settings simply do not have – and of course, is of no help to any setting that do not have registers in this format.

What’s more, while the reason that has been given for this change is to reduce the chance of fraud and/or error in claims, I am not aware of any statistics or figures that have been released to suggest that these scale of such issues warrants this approach.

I know that a survey has been issued on this proposal and I expect that you will find that there is very strong opposition to this change. We at the Early Years Alliance urge the government to scrap this plan and to work with the sector to address any concerns about the way that claims are made, without increasing the burden on a sector already stretched incredibly thinly.

I would be happy to meet with you to discuss this matter further.