Providing Early Years Funded Entitlement (EYFE)

You will need to complete claim submissions and other forms on the Online Provider Portal (OPP).

Once per term, you will need to:

• submit an estimate - this is optional and allows you to receive 70% of your funding prior to actuals - for more information see how providers receive funding payments 
• ensure parents accessing EYFE with you for the upcoming term have completed and returned a parent declaration form (see parent declaration form section below) plus any additional contracts before headcount day
• verify EYFE for Working Families codes using the eligibility checker
• submit actuals
• complete a termly provider update form
• complete your termly sufficiency update

Once per year, you will need to:

• complete the annual early years census form in the early spring term
• complete the provider declaration form in March to renew your agreement to the EYFE provider declaration

You may also need to:

• apply for Disability Access Fund for eligible children (maximum once per year per child at one provider)
• submit a request for Inclusion Funding
• submit staff changes to update us on information regarding the providers main contact and users for the OPP

For full details of the duties and responsibilities of EYFE providers, please see the EYFE provider declaration above.

All children, including those accessing only Universal EYFE

Providers must confirm that they have seen the original of a child’s birth certificate or passport and record the number on the parent declaration form.

Providers are responsible for verifying that the child is age-eligible for the EYFE they wish to claim for. For 3 and 4 year olds accessing Universal EYFE, no further verification is required.

Children awarded 2 year old LA Issued EYFE

Two year olds who meet certain criteria can be approved by the local authority to access up to 15 hours per week of EYFE. Children approved by:

• West Sussex County Council (WSCC) will receive a letter confirming when children can begin accessing EYFE, and a 6-digit numerical code
• a local authority other than WSCC will still have received a confirmation letter or email. However, parents will need to provide you with a copy, which you must forward to us at free.entitlement@westsussex.gov.uk so that we may verify the child’s eligibility and accept any subsequent claims from you for this child

Children awarded EYFE for Working Families

Parents approved for EYFE for Working Families must renew their code every three months. This means you must check eligibility for EYFE for Working Families for each child each term using the eligibility checker, both before the child starts their funded place, and prior to each subsequent term.

When checking, you will be able to see the eligibility code’s.

• start date - is when the code was issued (applied via the HMRC application process), but this is not the date that a child can access their funding. The start date of a code must always be before 31 of March, August or December in order to access the term that follows. For example, codes must have a start date on or before 31 March in order to be able to access EYFE for Working Families in the summer term.
• end date - is the date a parent needs to reconfirm their code by. The code enters its grace period the day after
• grace period - is the period of time where a code is still able to be used to access funding. It can only be used if a funded place has already been accessed and only with the provider it was used with. The code is valid at the child’s current provider up until the grace period end date
• grace period end date - is the potential date that the child could be funded up to, if they fall out of eligibility, such as if the parents’ working hours change. It is important to note the code can only be used during its grace period if the child is already accessing a funded place with you

Three and 4 year old children who fall out of eligibility for accessing EYFE for Working Families will be unable to continue accessing Extended EYFE but can still access Universal EYFE. Two year olds awarded EYFE for Working Families cannot continue unless eligibility is reconfirmed at a later date, or they are awarded 2 year old LA Issued EYFE.

Claims are submitted to us electronically using the Online Provider Portal only. You will be given access to the correct functions within the portal at the point of approval. Portal help guides and instructional videos are provided to help you to claim.

You are responsible for submitting your claims on time. The weekly Early Years and Childcare newsletter email provides a reminder to make your claim.

Email Family.info.service@westsussex.gov.uk if you are an early years and childcare provider and are not receiving the weekly newsletter.  

• Parent declaration form 2025 to 2026 (Word, 69KB)
• Parent declaration form 2025 to 2026 (PDF, 260KB)
• Notes on completing the parent declaration form (PDF, 161KB)

This must always be up to date and any changes, including alterations to hours, must be confirmed by completing a new copy of the parent declaration form. This is especially important where the child is claiming EYFE at more than one provider.

This form must be retained by the provider, for the current financial year (April to March), plus two years from completion date.

If we have any issues when processing claims, we will request that you send in a copy. Otherwise, there is no need to send us a copy unless you wish to apply for the Disability Access Fund.

The Online Provider Portal is the only method of data collection. Contact us as soon as possible if you require login details to be re-sent or reset for you.

Please take into account when a child is attending more than one provider or if a child’s yearly allowance is close to being used up in their third or sixth funding period. Remember the yearly allowance can be different for each child and is determined by when the child becomes of eligible age.

We recommend you retain a record of the child level hours (per week and number of weeks) that you used to calculate an estimate, which will assist you later when you are required to submit actuals.

If a child has taken up a school place, even on a part-time basis, they are no longer eligible to claim EYFE.

Late returns will jeopardise prompt payment.

Returns received after the deadline will be actioned when all payments for prompt returns have been completed.

If you choose to submit an estimate claim, we pay 70% of the estimated term up front. You will receive:

• the entire 70% prior to the beginning of the term if you choose to receive 2 payments per term
• a proportion of the 70% prior to the beginning of each month of the term (except for the final month of the term, which will be your actuals payment) if you choose to receive monthly payments

This is followed by a reconciled balance paid based on the actuals headcount (child-level) return. Please take this into account in your cash flow forecast and planning of expenditure throughout each term.

To claim an estimate, you submit the total number of EYFE hours expected to be claimed in headcount week only. Our system will automatically calculate the estimated total number of EYFE hours for the term. You must ensure that this figure is as accurate as possible, and this only applies to children who will be eligible for EYFE.

Estimate payments are based on the school terms, which are:

• spring and summer terms - 12 weeks
• autumn term - 14 weeks

If you are open for more weeks, do not amend the number of weeks at estimate stage. You will have the opportunity to amend when submitting actuals (child-level) data. Instead, calculate the correct figure to submit by using the method below.

Number of EYFE hours used in a week x number of weeks open in the term ÷ standard term length = figure to submit. For example, you will be claiming 100 hours a week for 15 weeks in the Summer term. 100 hours x 15 weeks = 1500 hours. 1500 ÷ 12 weeks of the standard Summer term = 125 hours to submit as the estimate claim.

Guidance is available on our Online Provider Portal pages.

This is where you submit your child-level actuals data. You are able to view all children on your headcount that have been taken from the previous term’s headcount and only includes those children who are still of eligible age to claim EYFE.

You must ensure that all details are correct for each child and complete all details and weeks/hours as appropriate. All hours will be shown as zero to enable you to do this and minimise the risk of incorrect claims.

The School Admissions team use this data for children about to start school. The ethnicity information and number of unfunded hours per week is particularly important for the Department for Education Early Years census.

You must remove any children who have left your provider, whether to go to school or for other reasons. We will follow this up and re-claim funding made for any false claims.

If you do not have any eligible children to claim EYFE for this term,  email free.entitlement@westsussex.gov.uk stating you have no eligible children at present.

Guidance is available on our Online Provider Portal pages.

Note that you will only be able to enter actuals data online for children who are attending your provider on headcount day. If you wish to request funding for children who start after this date, see our Requesting funding after headcount web page.

Term time only – claiming and delivering EYFE over 38 weeks or less

We pay funding over the standard number of weeks as set in the provider declaration clause 4.28. If a child’s claim differs from this, you must also change the ‘Weeks attended in term’ field for all applicable children.

Examples of when you will need to do this include if you are open for less weeks, or if a child does not have enough entitlement remaining. Refer to the EYFE provider declaration for more information.

Stretched funding

You can deliver EYFE over more than 38 weeks per year, but this will mean you can offer less than the 15 or 30 hours per week.

For example, if you wish to deliver over 51 weeks of the year, this means you can only deliver up to 11 hours per week for children eligible for 2 year old LA Issued EYFE and Universal EYFE. For those eligible for EYFE for Working Families, you can claim and deliver up to 22 hours per week.

There are 2 different ways to stretch funding:

Standard stretched funding

Applies where your claim for funding to WSCC reflects what you will deliver. For example, you would claim 11 hours over 51 weeks over the year and deliver funded hours on this basis. (570 hours divided by 50 weeks equals 11.4 hours. Rounded down to the nearest half-hourly increment, this equals 11 hours per week).

Providers can only claim in increments of half an hour, so you will not be able to claim some of the yearly entitlement of 570 or 1140 hours.

Self-stretched funding

Applies where you claim from WSCC as if delivering on a term-time only basis, but deliver EYFE over more weeks, with a reduced number of hours per week.

For example, you may claim 15 hours over 38 weeks. This would provide you with funding for 570 hours. You can then deliver these 570 hours over more than 38 weeks. If you chose to deliver these over 50 weeks, you will deliver 11.4 hours per week (or 11 hours and 24 minutes).

You may claim less than the full entitlement and still stretch or self-stretch this funding.

For example, if you fund a child for 9 hours a week for 50 weeks of the year, you would work out a calculation as follows:

• 9 hours x 50 weeks = 450 hours to be used
• 450 hours over 38 weeks = 11.84 hours a week

Claims must be made in half-hourly increments, meaning you cannot submit a request for 11.84 hours. To work around this, you can claim 11.5 hours a week for 12 weeks in spring and summer, and claim 12.5 hours a week for 14 weeks in autumn. This would give you a total across the year of 451 hours. Therefore, you need to ensure you give the child an extra hour of FE time at some point in the year.

You may choose to either stretch or self-stretch, but you cannot do both. To help you decide which would suit your provision, consider that:

• self-stretching enables you to claim and deliver the entire yearly entitlement of 570 or 1140 hours, whereas stretching will often leads to a small shortfall of hours that you cannot claim
• you may not be able to claim an even amount of hours per week if you self-stretch
• you may need to tailor your pattern of delivery to account for      claiming on a term-time only basis if you self-stretch
• if you self-stretch and the child leaves partway through the year you might:
  • not receive all the funding for the hours you've provided 
  • get too much funding meaning the child cannot use the hours elsewhere
• it may be easier to track funding received via the Online Provider Portal, as the information will reflect both what you have claimed and delivered

To work out how to claim for delivering an amount of hours per week, use our EYFE self-stretched claim calculator below.

• EYFE self-stretched claim calculator (Excel, 26KB)

If you are offering stretched or self-stretched EYFE, you can offer a term-time only pattern of delivery at the same time.

Children may start after headcount if they are:

• approved for EYFE for Working Families and their date of birth puts them in the 9 months plus age group
• approved for 2 year old LA Issued EYFE
• eligible for any other EYFE and an exceptional reason applies

If they start after headcount, you cannot submit a claim via Actuals. You will need to submit a Post Headcount Exceptional Payment (PHEP) request form.

You can do this and find more information regarding exceptional reasons on our requesting funding after headcount page.

Submission deadlines, headcount date and help guides on how to submit both estimate and actuals EYFE claims (including EYPP and DAF) can be found on our Online Provider Portal guidance pages and in our weekly early years and childcare newsletter. Please ensure you are receiving the newsletter, and contact us if you are not.

To order hard copies for your provision, email free.entitlement@westsussex.gov.uk stating the number required and the name and address for delivery.

A digital version of the leaflet is also available below if you wish to share it with parents via email or other communications.

• Early Years Funded Entitlement - A guide for parents and carers (PDF, 906KB)

• Privacy notice for parents accessing early years and childcare provision