Guidance

Early years financial incentives

Support for early years providers to make incentive payments when recruiting new staff.

Applies to England

Documents

Details

This programme provides new and returning eligible early years workers with a recruitment bonus of £1000 after tax and National Insurance shortly after they take up post.

It has 2 strands:

  • the financial incentives pilot offers S31 grant funding to 20 local authorities to help the work with providers and deliver the pilot. It will run from April to December 2024. The S31 grant letter lists the funding allocation for each local authority

  • the financial incentives live test allows eligible providers in 6 local authorities to test the functionality of an online portal on a small scale, in a live environment. The portal has been developed to deliver incentives to early years staff. The live test will run from November 2024 to March 2025

Updates to this page

Published 8 February 2024
Last updated 25 November 2024 + show all updates
  1. Updated to include information about the financial incentives live test.

  2. First published.

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