Guidance

Parental declaration form: guidance

Updated 9 February 2026

Applies to England

Parental declaration form

A parental declaration form is an agreement between parents and their chosen provider or providers in respect of receiving the early years entitlements. As set out in the Early education and childcare statutory guidance for local authorities, local authorities should ensure providers complete a parental declaration with the parent before a child first takes up an entitlements place (A1.43).

The declaration should set out the hours and patterns of access to the free entitlements that the parent and provider have agreed to. This document may also be used by local authorities as part of their audit process.

Local authorities are encouraged to stick as closely as possible to the parental declaration template. This is to promote consistency for both parents and providers who claim or operate the entitlements across local authority boundaries.

Local authorities should:

• support providers to establish parental declarations with parents
• ensure that parental declaration forms remain up to date (for example termly, ad-hoc) and only include current terminology and relevant information
• ensure that providers retain copies of their parental declarations for data retention and auditing purposes

A parental declaration form template is available.

Information local authorities should include

Information on eligibility for the entitlements and for additional support

Local authorities should include information about early years pupil premium (EYPP) and the disability access fund (DAF) in their parental declaration forms to support parents to access this additional support.

Local authorities should include the information they need to:

• validate working parent entitlement eligibility codes
• check eligibility for early learning for 2 year olds and EYPP

Local authorities can also include information collected during the census such as:

• EYPP eligibility
• child’s ethnicity
• special educational needs (SEN) information

Local authorities are encouraged to promote consistency for both parents and providers who claim or operate the entitlements across local authority boundaries. If information to support census is included, it should be added as an annex to the parental declaration form, rather than into the main document.

Information on free hours

The form should include the number of:

• free hours per day or week
• weeks over the year that the child is taking up their free place

Parents who stretch their free hours across the year can then see that they have received their child’s full entitlement.

Information on charges

The form should set out optional extras the provider charges for:

• consumables
• additional hours or services

Parents can then clearly see and understand what optional extras they have agreed to pay alongside their free hours.

We expect local authorities to take a pragmatic approach to the level of detail expected from providers when clarifying what optional extras a parent has agreed to pay for. It should also enable the parent or carer to understand the charges they are agreeing to.

Information local authorities should not include

This form is an agreement between the provider and the parent, which sets out what provision the child will receive in relation to accessing the early years entitlements. Therefore, the form should only include information necessary for the delivery of the early years entitlements by the providers for the child.

Do not include information that is not relevant for the parent, such as:

• information more suited to the local authority provider agreement
• provider deadlines, such as deadlines to submit headcount data

Re-signing the parental declaration

While local authorities have assurances in place that parental declarations remain up to date (as set out in A1.43 and A4.32 of the Early education and childcare statutory guidance for local authorities), parents should only be asked to re-sign their parental declaration if the information in the current form changes. For example, if they:

• reduce or increase the number of hours they take up
• change the days their child attends
• change which settings their child attends
• identify changes to the child’s eligibility (step 3 of the parental declaration form)

Providers and parents can then keep administrative burdens to a minimum.