Nurseries cannot charge extra to access free hours: updated guidance

I think it’s a nonsense rule that doesn’t improve access at all. School nurseries can provide fully free places, private nurseries should be allowed to apply the finding and charge whatever else makes up the total cost of their fees.
As someone who needs full time childcare for each child it was so annoying trying to get my youngest a place in the nursery we already use because so many people were just trying to cash in on the free hours and wouldn’t have used a place otherwise!

There will just be another way around it

mine gets something like 5.86 an hour - the hourly rate of the place is 11£ so it nowhere near covers it

so now the minimum number of days you can attend is 3 it’s only full days of 10 hours (35 hours a week) and you are charged year round - funding only covers 38weeks a year so it’s stretched to cover all 52 weeks (so something like 21 hours a week - sorry my maths isn’t great this evening after long day)

they also only allow the hours to be used over 5 days - so if you only go 3 days you can only use like 4 hours a day! So the parent is then charged for the rest of the hours that are not funded🤷‍♀️

half days or 4 hour days are not an option!

But that's not free at the point of access is it and so not how it's supposed to be done.

I'm a childminder - I don't charge a top up. However I barely scrape an income even working a 55 hour week by the time expenses go out I'm looking at a profit of about £6 per hour. I could earn more in tescos but I love my job.
I know childcare is expensive but frankly it's a fairly short period of time in your lives and it should be for the most precious thing in your life.

I looked it up on council website and it was around £12 for under 2s. Our council funding was high though (London based) a lot of others were providing around £9 per hour like you said.

Either way, it's often similar to what nurseries charge, imo the nurseries shouldn't be charging top ups to make more profit

What percentage of their turnover was that? If it’s 2.5mlllion profit on 5million turnover- yes that looks like a licence to print money.
If it’s 2.5 million on 250 million turnover it’s 1% profit and they’re probably lucky they didn’t fall into a loss.

You will need two staff members minimum in a room, I also don’t think one staff member will be doing a full 11 hour shift (minus 1 hour for the lunch).

The younger children may receive more funding but their ratios are smaller too.

I think that your nursery receives extra funding somewhere. Are they a children’s centre?

Also with all due respect in London the rent will be a lot higher that where your nursery is.

Probably less than £12 for under 2s.
I get £9.60 for under 2s, £7.20 for 2s (both more than I charge) and £5.20 for 3+ (less than I charge).
The problem with private nurseries are that there are owners that want to make profits.

All nurseries should be state owned.

Where is this nirvana where rent, food, staff, insurance, training, utilities, business rates, consumables, replacement toys enrichment activities, and maintenance can be covered by a hourly rate equal to the government funding ? It certainly isn’t anywhere near where we live!

My child is over 2 so we get less than the funded hours this way, but it still reduces our bill a lot

She's not supposed to do that either. She's supposed to subtract the hours not the rate. Lucky for you it works out better but not for her.

You can also Google and find council nursery/childminder funding rates across the country, if you're interested. They all pay a lot per hour for under 2s

The change is they can't call it a blanket sustainability change. They need to break down on the invoices exactly what they are charging for and at what cost.

My childminder just subtracts the total funding amount she gets for us from our bill, so I know exactly what the council give her per hour.

It's about £12 per hour for under 2s (more than her hourly rate) and about £6 per hour for older kids.

Imo nurseries are just greedy. The funded hours significantly reduce our childcare bill, even on the lower rate

Interesting. The sustainability charge for funded hours does seem like it would be difficult to enforce. Wonder if any parents will raise it. They're an excellent nursery. But they continue to increase costs. It went up 10 percent in January and going up another 4.5 in April.

Guess the risk is they'll go fully private and won't accept any funding.

And quite possibly, lead to nurseries closing

Yes, they will either refuse to take 'partially' funded places or close altogether.

Yep they've closed the loophole on split sessions years ago....

Childcare businesses and their CEOs are making huge profits off the backs of children and their parents. My sister's nursery charge between £4 & £8 PER HOUR as a 'consumables fee' for children who use the funded hours, meanwhile the company made 2.5 million in profits last year

When mine were young, it was normal for hours to be in set sessions. So they could do 8-11 free for example, but you have to pay for 11-6pm if you didn't pick up at 11am. Or indeed, having the second session as 3-6pm. As long as there's the option to pick them up between 11-3pm...

I signed local authority contracts for twenty odd years, the phrase used was 'free at the point of access' so you could add on extras but only is they were optional.

The bit that's changed is that invoices must be clearly detailed with any optional extras. And they must be optional.

The rest was in the guidance before, nurseries just aren't following them. I get why, I'm a childminder and this change will affect me. But some nurseries in particular make their invoices very complicated to understand and parents aren't sure what they're actually being charged for.

The whole issue here is the Government trying to sell it as free childcare, rather than what it is, and what most parents would very much appreciate - heavily subsidised childcare.

Even more so since they have lowered the ages of the children eligible.

When the free places for education for 15 hours a week was introduced from the term after the child's birthday, the cost of the Nursery subsidising each place was more easily met from what they were able to charge parents of 2, 1, and under 1 yr olds. Since then, workplace pensions became compulsory, minimum wage has risen considerably, this year Employers NICs are increasing, plus Nurseries have been affected by the same CoL increases everyone else has - utilities and food being 2 big bills increasing. Don't get me wrong, I'm fully on board with workplace pensions and with increase in NMW, but the maths doesn't add up for the Nursery owners.

I don't know how nurseries have survived for so long as it is. The staff (at my childs nursery) are on minimum wage, even those who have been qualified EYPs for years. They put so much effort into the children and make their nursery experience a great one. It's not an easy job, I think it's a disgrace what they are paid.

This isn’t a new thing. The most stupid thing of all is the government promising funding and extra nursery places, but actually relying on the private sector to provide these. The private sector doesn’t want to and doesn’t have to! How many disused classrooms have we seen converted in advance of the September 30 hours? How many extra staff trained? Sweet FA. Good luck to anyone wanting childcare from September, is all I can say!