MANY families throughout the country feel the financial pressure from the cost of childcare.

Working parents in particularly may find it isn't cost effective to work when weighing up the slice of their salary spent on childcare.

Government plans to double free childcare and early-years education from 15 to 30 hours for each week of the school year, would no doubt help to alleviate the financial pressure many families face, but research is now suggesting that fewer than half of nurseries are likely to extend free childcare places for pre-schoolers to 30 hours a week amid concerns over funding.

Pilots of the scheme start this Autumn and while many nurseries and keen to help parents by offering the full 30 hours, there are fears that government funding to provide the places will not be enough to cover their cost, according to the National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA).

A survey conducted by the association found that 45 per cent of the nurseries polled say they are likely to extend the number of free hours on offer.

Currently, nurseries are managing to offer 15 hours of free childcare a week because they plug the shortfall in government funding, the NDNA's report said, adding that in practice, this means that parents pay a higher rate for the hours their child spends in nursery above 15 hours.

The average nursery has to absorb around £34,000 a year due to the funding gap, with 89 per cent of nurseries making a loss on free places.

"Doubling this entitlement to 30 funded hours for working parents of three and four-year-olds is going to increase this shortfall further but leave nurseries with no means of making up that loss," says the report.

The NDNA said its survey had shown that only a third of youngsters aged three and four attend nursery for more than 30 hours a week.

NDNA chief executive, Purnima Tanuka, says the nursery sector is reluctant to commit to offering more free hours when they already make a significant annual loss - an average of £34,000 per nursery - on the funded places they currently provide: "The nursery sector is fully behind the principle of more support for parents. But serious funding shortfalls stand in the way of nurseries getting on board, despite their desire to help families with free childcare," she says.

"The nursery sector and the Government want the same thing. We all want to make 30 free hours childcare workable and sustainable."

Mum-of-two, Amanda Hardaker, from Bingley relies on family and nursery to look after her three-year-old while working full-time.

She says the provision of 15 hours childcare has helped to reduce her bill but fears the offer of 30 hours could mean some nurseries may have to put up their fees to compensate for the offer of the extra free childcare places.

"It is down to the individual nurseries but the 15 hours helps me greatly. My nursery bill is now cut in half which is a really big saving," she explains.

Danielle Dixon, Director of Kinder Haven Ltd which operates six nurseries across the district, says:

"The Government plans to set national pay rates to providers that will pay to Local Authorities, this needs to be transparent and fairly distributed with sustainable and realistic rates that actually cover the cost of quality childcare, anything less will simply jeopardise quality and place children at risk."

She says early year's settings nationally are already struggling. "The payment of low rates could be the tipping scale for future closures. Some early years settings will be unable to extend due to their operational costs being too high and delivery of quality care financially unviable.

Danielle adds that the 'uplift in national living, minimum wages, pension enrolment and general rising costs of maintaining quality childcare will also impact significantly on settings.

"In principle it should interact fluently with the existing entitlement, where flexible quality care and early education is provided, the only difference is it needs to be cost effective."

She says her company will not compromise on quality and are already reviewing and exploring options to reduce their costs in anticipation of the additional free hours.

"We want to support all of our working parents and a possible option for us may be to restrict the places we offer, if the funding does not cover the cost of the childcare we provide. It's a telling time for us all in early years, we will for now consolidate and see how it is going to develop before we consider expansion and the options available too us."