Revealed: The UK Cities With The Most (And Least) Affordable Childcare

If there’s one thing all parents know it’s that childcare is bloody expensive – and where you live has a major bearing on just how much cash you’ll be parting with each month.

For instance, a new piece of research found Luton is one of the most expensive cities for monthly childcare costs.

According to toy website Play Like Mum, which conducted the research, parents in Luton work an average of 116 hours to pay for their childcare – with the average monthly price of childcare costing around 70% of their wages.

In contrast, Burnley is one of the cheapest locations, with residents needing to work, on average, for 28 hours to cover a full-time spot at nursery, amounting to just 17% of their wages.

Preston is also one of the cheapest locations for childcare in the UK as residents need to work, on average, 43 hours to cover their costs for nursery, amounting to 26.21% of their wages.

But on the opposite end of the scale, parents in Nottingham, York, Norwich, Wigan, Swindon, Northampton and Worthing are spending over 50% of their income on childcare, working over 83 hours to cover the costs.

To come up with the list, Play Like Mum looked at Numbeo for data referring to the cost of one month’s full-time childcare for a number of cities and regions in the UK.

It also used the ONS Annual Survey of Hours & Earnings in 2022 to find the full-time average monthly salary for each city.

The brand found the monthly cost of childcare, the average monthly salary, and the hourly wage for residents in each UK area and then calculated the number of hours that parents in that area would need to work to pay for the monthly cost of childcare, and what percentage of their wages would account for it.