nursery grant funding headache!

[LollysMum1]

My daughter became eligible for the nursery grant from Sept. Having just received an invoice from her nursery I'm not sure whether they are charging us correctly so am hoping someone can help before I write to nursery and look a complete idiot!

DD does 2 mornings and 1 school day per week (which only amounts to 3 2.5 hr sessions because conveniently the afternoon on the school day is only 2 hrs long).

We are charged £16.85 for a 3.5 hr morning by the nursery, less £8.83 of nursery grant. So we still end up paying about half of the total charge, ie £8.02. Am I right in thinking that we should only pay for 1 hour per morning, to take the 2.5 free hours up to 3.5 hrs? And that this should be calculated by working out the hourly rate for a morning, ie 16.85 divided by 3.5 = £4.81 - so we should only pay £4.81 per morning and not £8.02? The same would apply to the school day session but obviously we would pay for 4 hrs as she does a total of 6.5.

Any help would be gratefully received!!

[Runoutofideas]

I think you'll find that the nursery grant can only be worth £3.53 per hour, not £4.81 so you are effectively paying a top up of about £1.30 per hour. Not entirely sure of the legalities of this, as I had heard that top ups were not allowed. However, I have always had to pay extra at our preschool as they claim not to be able to provide the service for the amount they are repaid by the grant as they have a higher ratio of staff than is legally required. I'm no expert, but I think this could be what's happening.

[cktwo]

Best speak to the council. I thought it was meant to be a free session not a deduction of rates but I could be wrong.

[purepurple]

So the session costs £16.85

Your DD recieves NEG which is £8.83

You still have to pay the difference of £8.02

Sounds simple to me.

[purepurple]

For the full day, you can only claim 2 sessions, one for the morning and one for the afternoon.
So for the full day, you deduct 2x £8.83 from the fee for the day.
The grant is paid for the session, not by the hour.