Most local areas now have comprehensive understanding of childcare sufficiency gaps, and this presents a timely opportunity for some bravery.

With £9.5 billion for early years entitlements, including more money to support the most vulnerable children through increases in the Early Years Pupil Premium and Disability Access Fund, the resource available is significant, yet there remains a backdrop of pressure on wider council budgets.

In addition, there has been funding - £82mn already committed and a further £325mn promised in phase 3 - for opening new school-based nurseries, £289mn to support wraparound childcare expansion, and £100mn capital to spend across both early years and out of school childcare. Add to this the £126mn investment in the Best Start in Life programme, £69mn to fund Family Hubs, and over £200mn each year for the next three years for the Holiday Activity and Food (HAF) programme and the fiscal commitment is crystal clear.

All of this is welcome and allows local authorities and providers to develop quality projects that improve opportunity for children most in need to better achieve and thrive; and help meet increasing and evolving parental demand for childcare for all ages throughout the year.

Now is the ideal moment to ask ‘are we getting the best value and the most needed outcomes from this attention and its money?’ Could we make more of a difference by doing things differently? Could this investment be used more effectively?

My experience as a former council early years and childcare officer, and current adviser, tells me there are local areas who, whilst welcoming all that is available, have identified needs that cannot solely be met effectively through available targeted funding streams, however creative they attempt to be. We should always be mindful of the risk that local projects/spends are deployed to comply and satisfy funding criteria yet as a result do not always represent best value for money.

One of the solutions is to offer local areas the opportunity to secure more flexible, individually targeted project funding. This can be used for the aspects of service provision identified locally as not currently being adequately met, and of being most in need in that area. These are projects which may not fit into the existing funding parameters, but they will best support local communities to deliver the breadth, quantity and quality of services for children and families across the widest possible age range. It’s like the local mortar that connects the national policy bricks.

Yes, this is potentially a more labour-intensive process through which to allocate and manage grant funding nationally. And it does require authorities to produce robust, data informed evidence of their needs, to understand and demonstrate clearly how those needs can be met, and to commit to a series of individually agreed outcomes against which funding will be allocated and performance judged.

However, in my experience, the majority are already aware of where the greatest unmet needs are and have the knowledge and information they need to pinpoint what is needed to fill those gaps. The one thing stopping them developing the specific plans and projects needed in each community is a lack of flexible funding that can deliver a range of outcomes. The frustration this brings is often amplified by funding being diverted or spent on other (sometimes short term) projects. The limitations of those funding streams mean funds cannot commonly be used in a way that local managers and strategists conclude will generate the best and most effective outcomes to meet the needs of parents and families, children and young people.

From a central government point of view, this new approach requires convincing negotiations with Treasury, and a commitment to individual conversations with each local authority to agree needs, and to approve plans to meet those needs, along with a process to monitor the progress of each agreed programme and the related funding approvals.

The potential benefits will enhance the central understanding of the particular needs in each local area and, if managed well, improve the confidence and the relationship between the two, offering opportunities to use childcare sufficiency assessment data, share good practice, knowledge and learning, and to inform government policy from the ground up. All of these are well worth this additional commitment and investment. It would result in locally led project design, development and delivery, and richer authority-led stakeholder engagement across a range of schools and settings, parents and families, professionals and partner organisations. All of whom will help to hold the council to account in the development of high quality, community projects with a clear focus on meeting local needs.

Hard choices and difficult decisions have become something of a cliché. This is a case where taking the harder choice, moving away from the one-size-fits-all model, and investing in and facilitating closer relationships between central and local government, presents the prospects of better outcomes for local people with the added bonus of achieving greater value for money.