Further to the Pre-school Learning Alliance's (PLA) freedom of information request (which was granted back in November) Deloitte have released the data upon which the 'cost of childcare' report was based. Neil Leitch of PLA has expressed his disappointment saying "we have a piece of research based on a very small, non-random sample of providers who have been presented with a set of very broad, poorly-worded questions asking them to estimate their delivery costs, with no specific guidance as to what these estimates should include. How can anyone in government think that this as an adequate approach to information-gathering? It's little wonder that it took over a year and the intervention of the ICO for the Department to release this data" You can examine the data yourself from here. You can discuss the data on this thread.