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Early Years Funding Rates 2026-27 by Local Authority

The hourly rate the Department for Education pays each of the 151 English local authorities for the funded entitlements from April 2026 to March 2027, for under 2s, 2-year-olds and 3 and 4-year-olds, with the change on 2025-26 and each authority's rank. These are the rates councils receive, not the rates they pass to providers, and the gap between the two is one of the first things worth knowing about any authority you operate in.

Search by authority or filter by region, sort any column, and copy the table for your own analysis. The City of London and the Isles of Scilly are funded through a separate central grant and are not in the DfE table. Data from the DfE workbook published 15 December 2025, re-checked whenever the Department updates it.

National averages, 2026-27

£12.04
Under 2s, average hourly rate
£8.90
2-year-olds, average hourly rate
£6.42 / £6.61
3 and 4-year-olds, universal and additional hours combined, before / after termly adjustment

Averages are the DfE's national figures weighted by hours, not the average of the 151 authority rates, and the DfE says they may change as allocations are updated for termly census data. The DfE's own headline for 3 and 4-year-olds is the £6.61 after the termly funding adjustment. Early years pupil premium is £1.15 an hour and the disability access fund £975 a year nationally.

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Early years hourly funding rates by local authority, 2026-27, £ per hour
These are the rates paid to councils, not to you. Each authority sets its own provider rates and supplements from this money. In 2026-27 it must pass at least 97% of the funding for each entitlement through to providers, for three and four-year-olds on the universal and additional hours combined, and for two-year-olds and under on each entitlement separately, with the three and four-year-old test applied to the rate before the termly adjustment. Your council's base rate is likely to sit below the figure here, with deprivation, quality and other supplements on top. Rank is the authority's position among the 151 for that age band, 1 being the highest rate; authorities on the same rate share a rank, shown with an equals sign. The change figure compares with the 2025-26 DSG rate. A 0% year-to-year protection applies, so no authority's rate fell on any band. On the after-adjustment basis the change includes a one-year termly adjustment, and the DfE expects provider uplifts broadly in line with the before-adjustment change.

Sources and definitions

Department for Education, Early years funding: 2026 to 2027, the local authority funding rates and step-by-step calculations workbook, sheets '3-4YO 2026-27 rates', '2YO 2026-27 rates', 'Under 2s 2026-27 rates' and 'National average rates'.

Three and four-year-old rates are shown before the termly funding adjustment by default. The DfE's note on the workbook says it expects authorities to pass on an uplift to their provider rate broadly in line with the before-adjustment columns, and the after-adjustment figure is available from the dropdown. A £6.20 minimum funding floor applies to the three and four-year-old rate after the termly adjustment, which is why the floor authorities appear at £6.01 or £6.02 on the before-adjustment basis and at £6.20 after it. The two-year-old rate is the same for the working parent and the families receiving additional support entitlements. Maintained nursery school supplementary funding is not shown.

Pass-through requirement, DfE, Early years entitlements: local authority funding operational guide 2026 to 2027, section 4.1. The authority rates are the DfE's final rates for the year; the national averages may move as allocations are updated for termly census data. Compiled by Litus Advisory from the DfE workbook published 15 December 2025, which was unchanged on gov.uk when this page was checked on 3 October 2026. The DfE publishes the following year's rates each winter ahead of April, and this page is refreshed when it does. If a figure looks wrong, the workbook is the authority and we would like to know.

What Comes Next

The rate your authority receives is the starting point. What reaches you, what it costs you to deliver the hour, and how the funded and private mix sits across your rooms is where margin is decided. The Margin Diagnostic walks the full P&L across funded hour economics, fee architecture, occupancy and ratios, workforce cost, and central overhead to find and size the EBITDA opportunity.

Learn more about the Diagnostic
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