Lockdown 3.9 – changes made 15 March.

Two GCs, which between them make important changes to childcare arrangements for essential workers.

GC 2021/0054 deals with child care service providers, and replaces its predecessor. The only substantive change is to paragraph 2, which is notably clearer than the earlier version. The new provision makes it clear that premises providing child care services, while generally closed, may be entered by residents, and by persons required for essential maintenance of essential operations (para.2(a),(b)). Childminders, and childminders only, may also be open to a person who performs an essential service and who is permitted to leave his or her home (para.2(c)). Read literally, this would not allow a child of such a person to be taken to the premises, which would rather defeat the point – so despite the plain words of the paragraph, I think it should be read as including the child of such a person. If that is the case, we need to look to the movement GC to see when a child may be taken to a child minder. So this provision opens childminders for children of essential workers.

GC 2021/0055 deals with restrictions on movement, and replaces its predecessor. The only substantive changes involve childcare and education. Para 5(1)(z) allows a person, in order to attend an open work place, to take a child to and from child-care – note that this requires that the person does so in order to attend a work place not simply to work, so an essential worker who works from home will not be covered. There is an odd bit of drafting in relation to children. Given that para 5(1)(z) is addressed at workers, not their children, it would have been useful to make it clear that children may travel; but what has been added is the right of the parent or guardian, and the person who will care for the child, to accompany the child between (para.5(1)(z)(vi)(a)). The latter is new, and sensible, the former is already in the provision, and might be usefully replaced by an explicit recognition that the child will be travelling to where they will be cared for. Another useful addition to travel is the right of an unaccompanied child to make the journey themselves, “where appropriate” (para.5(1)(z)(vi)(b)).

In relation to the conditions for childcare, it is useful to distinguish between professional education and childcare, and more informal arrangements.

The person can take the child to open education or childcare premises, at the moment (because of GC2021/0054), allowing them to take advantage of a childminder. There is no restriction on household mixing in relation to childminders. So if a childminder is otherwise legally permitted to take two children from different households at the same time, they can continue to do so. Given this is the case, it is obvious they could take children from different households on different days. This is quite a contrast with informal arrangements.

Turning to informal arrangements, the person can take the child to the residence of a family member who will care for the child; or “one household where a household member will look after that child”. The last is a variant of an earlier provision which talked about households where the household member “would normally look after the child”. The new drafting might seem to make redundant the explicit discussion of family members, which formerly allowed family members who were not the usual childcare option to step in. One possibility, however, is that different family members households may care for a child at different times, while there can be only “one” non-family household. “One” has been introduced in favour of the more general “A” in the predecessor, so I think this is probably the right reading. For both informal options, the only other children who can attend that resident or household “at any time” are children who ordinarily reside there (para.5(1)(z)(iv)). The words “at any time” have been added to this version, which I think changes the law – not only may an informal carer not import children from two households at once, but now they may only import children from one household at any time.