REGULATORY REFORM: Breaking the compliance deadlock holding back early learning centres in Cape Town

Over the past three years, the Centre for Early Childhood Development (CECD) and the City of Cape Town have partnered to remove municipal barriers that prevent ECD centres from achieving registration and accessing critical subsidies. Through a dedicated task team, the collaboration has already secured significant regulatory reforms, reduced compliance costs, and created more practical pathways for centres – particularly those serving vulnerable communities – to operate legally and sustainably.

Over the past three years, the Centre for Early Childhood Development and the City of Cape Town have been working together to tackle barriers to early childhood development (ECD) centre registration at a local government level. Their efforts are aimed at transforming the regulatory environment to be more enabling and responsive to the realities of early learning practitioners in communities, with a focus on land use as the first step in the municipal compliance process.

The centre first approached the City of Cape Town in 2022 after engagements with a range of ECD centres in the metro revealed common challenges in achieving municipal approvals needed for registration. This led to the establishment of a joint ECD task team in December of that year, led by Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis and Deputy Mayor Eddie Andrews.

“It’s difficult for ECD centre principals to navigate the world of local government approvals and compliances. What we’re finding is because ECD centres are not able to comply with the municipalities, they cannot reach the relevant, appropriate level of registration, which is silver- or gold-level registration, to then access the [ECD] subsidy,” said Yusrah Ehrenreich, Centre for Early Childhood Development advocacy and social justice manager, at the launch of a learning brief on the organisation’s efforts to address local government barriers in May 2026.

“In response to this, the Centre for Early Childhood Development Advocacy and Social Justice Unit decided to launch a targeted initiative, starting with the City of Cape Town, to look at those key barriers in the regulations, finances and processes that are preventing centres from getting those compliances in place.”

The ECD task team has drawn in government officials from the different departments that centres must interact with to achieve municipal approvals, and has reported on its progress to the mayor and deputy mayor every two to three months. The “social partners” in the process have been the Centre for Early Childhood Development and the nonprofit organisation, Ikamva Labantu.

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