Amendments to Education (Early Childhood Services) Regulations to accommodate Crown acquisition of land and network approval

Overview

From 1 February 2023, if you want to operate a new licensed early childhood service you will need network approval from the Minister of Education before you apply for licensing. Providers who obtain network approval may have conditions attached to the licence of their service to ensure the service delivery is consistent with their network approval.

Crown acquisition of land occupied by a licensed early childhood education and care centre

Under the current regulations, from 1 February 2023 any ECE centre on land acquired by the Crown for public works or urban development will have to get network approval before applying for a new licence when moving to the new premises.

We propose amending the Education (Early Childhood Services) Regulations 2008 to create an exception enabling the licence for an ECE centre to be amended, without requiring an application for network approval, where the service has to permanently relocate because its land has been acquired by the Crown under the Public Works Act 1981 or the Urban Development Act 2020.

Network approval provisions being taken into account for applications to amend a licence

As the current regulations pre-date the introduction of network approval, they do not state that the Secretary can take network approval provisions into account when assessing applications to amend a licence (regulation 33 of the Education (Early Childhood Services) Regulations 2008). 

We propose amending the regulations to make this clearer.

Completing the survey

The feedback you provide will be used to inform final decisions. For more details on the proposals, please read the discussion document or summary here.

The survey will take about 10-20 minutes. You can also complete the survey in te reo Māori by clicking here.