Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This dataset formed one element of an assessment of how local authorities make decisions about day care policy in the UK, and in particular England. The project as a whole relied largely on reviews of day care policy documents and interviews with relevant policy-makers.
These data allow the tracking of the main trends in day care provision in the UK at the local authority level. The project covered the time frame from 1973, the point of the last major reconstruction of local authorities, to the spring of 1995 when the national government again re-shifted local authority boundaries.
Main Topics:

The files include statistics on day care provision for children under the age of five years at the local authority level for all local authorities in the UK. The day care statistics are presented as a rate per 1000 children under five to permit direct comparability. Data for England cover places in day nurseries, in playgroups and with childminders, from April 1973 to March 1995. Data for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland cover places in day nurseries from 1987 to 1992.
Other variables cover: the presence or absence of political activism over day care issues in the 1980s and 1990s; the percentage of women elected to each local authority in England, Wales and Scotland in each year for which the day care provision statistics are available; the proportions of women who were employed in England, Wales and Scotland at the 1991 Census; Department of the Environment deprivation level scores and categories for each local authority in England based on Census data from 1971, 1981 and 1991; political party control of authorities in England, Wales and Scotland.

Standard Measures
Department of the Environment Urban Deprivation Index 1991 and Department of the Environment Index of Local Conditions 1991.