London Liberal Democrats have accused the mayor of failing to deliver his ambitious childcare plans for the Capital.

Figures published by Lib Dem assembly members show Ken Livingstone's London Development Agency achieved just 12 per cent of its targeted expansion of childcare places in the first six months of the current financial year.

The Labour mayor, in conjunction with the government, has promised to create 10,000 more daycare opportunities for parents in the Capital, 800 of which were planned to be in place by March of this year.

Livingstone's pledge was designed to counter the higher costs and shortage of places in London and the South East.

His Londoner newspaper this month ran the story across its front page with the promise that more parents would be able to enter the workplace.

But the Lib Dems claimed on Thursday that of the first 800 places projected to come on stream between April 2004 and March this year, just 95 were in place in the first six months of the scheme.

The party said the figures showed Livingstone was failing to live up to his promises still being made to voters and council tax payers.

"It is deeply worrying that so far the mayor has failed to deliver childcare places in London. Mr Livingstone has staked a lot of effort on the commitment to provide 10,000 new places, yet the record so far is pretty dire," assembly member Dee Doocey said.

"It is a real shame that the mayor is failing to live up to the Labour government's promise to hard working families in London to provide childcare places for their children.

"With the unemployment rate in London already the highest in the country, it is vital that the mayor does not continue to let Londoners down and raises his game to provide affordable and attainable childcare places for parents."

The figures were drawn from papers being discussed by the assembly budget committee on Thursday.

However Livingstone said the claims were unfounded as most of the places are due to come on stream as a result of new buildings being opened.

"The Liberal Democrats claim that the London Development Agency has failed to deliver on the number of childcare places under the Neighbourhood Nurseries Initiative (NNI) is not only ridiculous but completely inaccurate," he said.

"721 new childcare places, including the 95 places identified in the Lib Dems' press release, are on target to be achieved through NNI funding and we are confident that, through this and our Single Regeneration Budget funding, we will achieve a minimum of 800 new childcare places by the end of March 2005."