The average nursery could create around 13 more places for children if it had enough staff, according to National Day Nursery Association (NDNA) research.

The NDNA survey of 714 providers found that that seven in ten (69.8%) settings do not have enough staff to operate at maximum capacity. It revealed 54.5% of providers still do not have sufficient staff to deliver the full 30 hours for two-year-olds, while 57.7% do not have enough staff to deliver 30 hours for babies from September.

The average number of vacancies per setting is 4.2 full-time equivalent (FTE) and the average nursery needs 3.3 more members of staff to operate at full capacity.

The Department for Education (DfE) has estimated that nurseries need to recruit 36,000 staff to create the additional 70,000 places needed ahead of the September 2025 roll-out of increased hours for funded places for children.

The vast majority of nurseries (92.7%) have vacancies for qualified staff at Level 3, with 31.7% lacking qualified staff below Level 3.

The nurseries taking part in the survey said government policies were making it more difficult for providers to meet demand for places. More than four in five (81.1%) said changes to the employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs) made it harder for them to employ the number of staff they need and 78.9% said changes to charging guidance had made it more difficult to offer funded places.

Purnima Tanuku, NDNA executive chair, said the government should focus on supporting existing settings with recruitment to build capacity, rather than opening new nurseries.

“We know the government wants to tackle childcare deserts, but if thousands more school-based nurseries open without addressing this staffing crisis, qualified practitioners will just be taken from their existing settings, damaging the viability of already established provision,” she said. “This won’t create additional places for children in the way that fixing the workforce shortages will.”

She added: “Supporting nurseries to increase pay and reducing stress caused by long hours and overtime would improve retention and help attract new staff to the sector. This would mean funding rates that recognise that experienced and qualified staff deserve to be paid more than the minimum wage.”