Nursery are threatening to remove my child as I questioned fees

£30 a day for consumables isn't reasonable. But the nursery are stuck as either they charge such a fee to try and bridge the gap between government funding and how much it costs to provide nursery care, or they cut costs as much as they can until ultimately there is nothing left to cut and they are forced to close.
I don't think you were wrong to question it. This is not your fault or the nursery's fault. If they can fill your DC's space and think you might become problematic, they may well give you notice. If you are happy with the nursery, I would get in quick and apologise, explain you hadn't meant to cause an issue or investigation.

Of course they can terminate your contract, they’re a private business. Questioning it is one thing but going to the council was OTT and I can see why they were annoyed to be honest.

Except pre-school attached to a school where they do generally tend to be free because you’ll usually take a packed lunch and they’re actually 30 hours a week because it’s term time only. Which then will obviously cause issues in holidays etc when there’s no coverage but they’re usually too young for holiday clubs etc

I don't think you are unreasonable querying it. Dgd attends 3 days a week and the consumables charge is £10 per day for funded days and £2 per day non funded days.
This is a smallish private nursery. Given the competition for places I assume they charge enough to cover their costs.

Think OP has left the thread?

@BurntBroccoli yeah, you're not wrong there. But as it stands those extra fees are unavoidable I think wherever you use for the 'free' hours.

It would've been more prudent to have a look at what other nurseries in the area are charging to gauge whether the fee is "fair" or not. Snitching on them to the council was not the way to go.

They were satisfied with the findings and basically said there are no regulations they need to follow when it comes to consumables fees and they can charge what they like

But that's not true. Well, they can charge what they like but for the free hours these charges must be optional. That can affect your child eg you have to send in food rather than paying for it, or maybe they'll miss out on activities. But it must be possible to attend the free hours for free.

Just to add the ratio in a school is completely different.

• For children aged three and over, the ratio is one adult to eight children
• If a qualified teacher or someone with an approved level 6 qualification is present, the ratio for children aged three and over is one adult to 13 children

Personally this makes no sense for me - if you need to change nappies as a teacher, you still only have one pair of hands

A lot has changed in a few years, chiefly the wider age ranges eligible for funding, the increases in NMW and NIC and the cost of utilities (and interest, if the nursery building is funded by a mortgage)

Do you only attend term time? Do you pay the same amount all the time?

I know when my two were at nursery the hours were spread across a whole year so the 30 hours did not really cover that much time.

I don't think you were in the wrong.
That's a giant increase for 'consumables" they didn't give you a truthful answer, so you went above their head.
30 hours is supposed to be free. It was in my nursery and my kids only left a few years ago. I wasn't required to pay a penny - apart from suncream.

School based preschools are often similar in England, its the private day care nurseries with these issues

They walk amongst us.

I’m in Scotland and didn’t pay a penny from age 3-5. It was completely free full time Monday to Friday- school hours.

It does depend a bit on area - my understanding is that Scottish funding is much closer to local commercial rates and the same may be true for parts of England.

Exactly this.

Yes but is this in England only ? I mean my middle child was in nursery until recently using the 30 h free funding and we never had this . My youngest is about to start soon and the funding cover sit all but £7 a week not a day

You really didn’t think this through did you?

What did you actually hope would happen, if the council had found there to be a problem, as you suspected, did you expect them to still welcome you back with open arms, and lower the fees to boot?

Hardly likely. You must have realised that your actions had the potential to jeopardise your relationship with the Nursery?

Heating, food, nappies etc all went up in cost astronomically.

Staff are paid basically NMW. That's gone up without corresponding increase in funding to cover it. Same with extra charges like NI, pension etc.

Can't overcharge younger children to cover shortfall anymore.

Will also depend on location. There are cheaper nurseries near me but you have to supply everything and the ratios are bigger and it's a couple of rooms in a church hall. My nursery is more expensive but better ratios, purpose built building, supply everything, each room own outdoor space, sensory gardens, play areas, lots of toys and equipment.

I don’t get this . The only consumable I had with the free hours was 50 cents a day for fruit . Is this different depending where you are in the U.K. ? It was only a couple of years ago so can’t have changed that much

This was just because everyone outside of the system believes that this is a brilliant initiative that young parents were very lucky to receive from the Tories. The fact that everyone inside the system knows that it's a terrible system forcing the closure of childcare settings is by the by.

My older relatives believed from the news that from two my kids would get 30 funded hours as standard.

Actually it's the opposite. Historically the funding for 3/4 yo was so shit they charged parents of kids under 3 more than they cost to cover the shortfall. Now that the kids over 9 months get the same funding there is no one left to over charge to cover it.

They aren't allowed to call it anything but consumables so that's what they call it.

Yes technically parents can refuse to pay the top up fee. But it's a private nursery so they don't have to continue offering that place to the child who's parents won't pay, especially when the funding means there are more kids than spaces so there is a large waiting list of parents wanting the place willing to pay the fee.

And the government know how shit the funding is and if they enforce not paying top up fees all the nurseries would close and they would have a childcare scandal on their hands and millions of parents out of work and needing to be on benefits.

Indeed she can. That will totally fix her lack of a childcare place. Not sure what grounds she will use for a complaint as the whole point of her post is that she wants her child to attend the Nursery and is cross that they no longer appear to want her business. But yes absolutely, she should complain to Ofstead. That will fix it for her.🤣

Also, it’s very dependent on how the nursery offers the hours. 30 hours over 51 weeks is about 22 a week, our funded hours are (I think£ from 9 - 5.15 (nursery day is 8.30-5.45) and you pay £20 a day. However, it only works out at 2.5 funded days a week (22 hours). Anything beyond that is charged at full rate (£45/ half day, £78?/ full day).

Another nursery I looked at only offered the hours between I think 9-3 and the daily fee outside that was about £40-£45 but as that’s only 6 hours a day using the funding, you’d get 4 full days out of it at £45 ish.

So even though the daily fee is more, weekly it’s probably less than at our nursery, as it’s 4 days @ £45 and one full price, rather than 2 @ £20, half @ £15 (the 2.5 days funded) then half a day @ £45 and 2 days @ £78