This month all 33 London boroughs are invited to take part in the second round of bidding for the London Development Agency's Childcare Affordability Programme to go live from April.
Since the roll-out of the first round of funding started on 14 November, more than 3,255 subsidised full daycare and flexible places have been made available in the 26 London boroughs which have signed up to the scheme.
Denise Burke, senior childcare manager at the LDA, said that the first monitoring evaluation of the programme would take place at the end of March.
Speaking to delegates at a conference in London last month, she said, 'I think we all agree that the tax credit system doesn't work. What the Childcare Affordability Programme is providing at the moment, we see as an exciting mix of supply and demand-side funding.'
She added, 'It's being closely monitored by Beverley Hughes and the Treasury. And the early findings of the programme will feed in to the 2007 spending review and hopefully influence the funding of childcare in the future.'
The interim report by Sure Start into the scheme is due in August.
Ms Burke told Nursery World that it was too soon to know the actual number of places taken up, but that these figures would be published in the LDA's evaluation.
She added, 'If places being offered are not taken up in certain boroughs, we could redistribute the funding through another bidding round.'