Childminder claimed incorrectly for funding- £2k bill

Yes, unfortunately every LA works differently. It would be sooooo much easier if they all worked in the same way!

Can I say again, there isn't a single hub that every LA uses, they all have their own (some will use the same as each other such as synergy for example) but there isn't a blanket rule about what it will do when you submit.

This! If it's the wrong code, it won't go through!
She will also get reminders on the funding portal to do an eligibility check for the parents codes and if it's the wrong code it will tell her. I'm a childminder, and wouldn't be able to lose £2k, but it does sound like her mistake. She needs to ring her LA and see what she can do.

All these comments saying that the parent is expecting the childminder to work for free are just incorrect. The government provide the funding to help parents to work, the funding is there to enable someone like OP to fund childcare. OP found a childminder that would accept this funding and so she has every right to use it. The fact the childminder didn't bother claim is 100% NOT OPs fault.

A friend gives you a £50 voucher for your favourite shop, you pop it in your purse and forget about it. Three years later you find it at the back of your purse, go to spend it and find it is expired. Would you really go back to your friend and ask for another £50 because you forgot to spend the original voucher?! Because everyone who is tell OP to pay the childminder again is saying that's what she should do.

It's unlikely to be a problem. Just speak to the CM and make sure she has inputted the permanent code as long as you have kept it renewed then you will be covered. The CM needs to.make sure that they have your correct national insurance number and your child's dob typed in correctly on their provider portal when claiming the funding from their LA. I'm 99% sure that you will be OK and it may just be the CM panicking as she is getting an error message when yrying to claim as she hasn't updated the temporary code to the permanent code

If you have the correct code and they’ve messed up, then that is on them. You shouldn’t be penalised for it.
I had something similar happen with my child’s nursery, but I had a code that was valid for 12 months as I received UC at the time. They didn’t enter it as a 12 month code, so the following term they told me I didn’t have a valid code and invoiced me a much higher amount.
I disputed it as I had a valid code and was able to provide evidence in the form of an email from my local authority confirming it was still valid, so they had no choice but to correct my invoice. It took a lot of back and forth and I argued it fully, but was resolved eventually as I had provided evidence that this code was provided to them months before.
Stand firm on this, if it is a mistake of the child care setting.

The agreement for funding is between the childminder and the council.

As a childminder I would not expect a parent to pay for my mistake.
The parent has done all they should - the cock up is either on the part of the childminder or the council.

Where I am this situation couldn't have happened as I check all codes are eligible before the start of the term and then submit the details of parents/children/codes to the funding team. There would never be a situation where it would get to the end of the term and the council would decide the code was wrong.

I did have a slightly similar situation with a parent with a temp code that I didn't update when they were given the new code (my mistake) but as soon as I was notified that the code had run out I called the funding team and corrected it, all was well.

It sounds like as well as the childminder making a mistake, the council is running the funding scheme incredibly badly if something like this could happen.

Sounds like it's a her problem, not a you problem OP. I definitely wouldn't be paying anything else.

It doesn't matter what your weird and unhelpful opinion is @AnnaBalfour Legally the OP owes the childminder nothing whatsoever.

@AnnaBalfour Imagine you pay for a meal in a restaurant branch with a discount voucher valid in all branches of the chain. Then they come back months later to ask you to repay the voucher amount because they didn’t claim it properly from the main office? No customer would pay.

Sorry for the acoidnce of doubt the hard of thinking comment was not aimed at the OP but at @AnnaBalfour. Jesus wept.

If you paid your electricity bill and the energy company mistakenly did not assign your payment correctly, would you think you would need to pay again?

Of course not. You'd expect the energy company to sort it out, it's on them.

Lordy some people are very hard of thinking aren’t they 😂.

I think you need to find out what exactly happened OP. Did the childminder try and claim but fail because of an error on her part? Forgot to claim? Is suddenly ineligible for some reason as a provider? Or is there a glitch with your account? Have you become ineligible ? ( sounds the least likely of you have confirmation all looks ok your end)….

More than all this, can it be quickly solved so no-one is out of pocket?

The parent has effectively paid by supplying the code.
The childminder is entirely at fault for not then claiming their payment from the council.

The childminder does not get to then just go back to the parent and say whoops sorry I didn't claim the money you arranged to be paid to me, you now have to pay it again!!!

Are you crazy? This is entirely the childminders fault!!

It's the childminder who needs to claim so it's the childminder that should have sorted the mistake. You shouldn't have to pay anything because the funding would have been there if the childminder claimed it. Those people saying that you will need to pay are wrong, the money is there, absolutely not your fault if the money doesn't get taken. She is affectively refusing payment.

I had a similar, but not quite the same issue, where my nursery had filled in the funding form incorrectly. Thankfully I had queried it with them in writing and they confirmed that it was right.

It was only the next term that they realised that what they had to me was ‘right’, wasn’t and they tried to bill me £700. I had to put up a bit of a fight, but no way was I paying for their admin error.

Regardless of what happened I wouldn’t pay as it’s her error.

I really don’t think you understand how this works and your example isn’t even remotely the same

To be comparable it would be like a building firm coming and quoting you £2k to fix the roof. You agree the quote and they do the work. They then invoice you the agreed amount of £2k.

However, they miss a deadline to recoup taxes on a scheme for having a few apprentices. Their admin error. This means the job has cost them £2k more

They then come to you asking for an extra £2k which they were expecting to get from the government but due to their error they haven’t. £4k was never mentioned as a price but they now expect you to pay it as ‘services have been rendered’

That is a more comparable scenario and I doubt any sane person would think this is a reasonable request of the builder

@Sofiewoo

Sigh, you’re like a dog with a bone.

Comparing a boss with a very successful limited company to a sole trader self employed childminder is stupid. But he we are.

The CM has already done a terms work and yes it was her mistake, so we’ve come to the conclusion, I’d be the parent to understand an error is human and that she deserves to be paid for services rendered. The OP although frustrated mentioned that being ‘fair’ to her too.

And we’ve established that you’d the parent who says your mistake, so you don’t get paid for your work.

Cool. We don’t agree and your insistence is strange, on other posts too you seem to have an axe to grind when it comes to paying childcare. I told you a few times upthread to leave it now and agree to disagree but you keep grinding that axe.

We view our childcare and childcare costs/staff very differently so we won’t agree. You can’t change my mind and I can’t change yours.

This is a decision for the OP in the end, not us so no need to get so invested.

The boss, so the business, the exact same scenario people are suggesting here?

Interesting it was fine for you to pass the cost onto someone else when it was your mistake. I guess that’s why you think the OP should pay for someone else’s incompetence in running their business.

@Sofiewoo

The boss, who upon seeing my absolute horror and shame, proceeded to tell me about significant mistakes he has made too. He explained human error is inevitable and that’s proved so true in life and in other work.

I claim the funding for a childcare setting and if she had tried to claim funding and the code was incorrect she would have had a message from the council and would have had a chance to rectify it. The code doesn’t change under normal
circumstances- it’s the end date that does when eligibility is reconfirmed- but when the system initially came in temporary numbers were issued. This sounds like her mistake not yours!

@AnnaBalfour I remember making a colossal accountancy error at an accounting firm I worked for when I was young. Human error, and thankfully I was shown mercy!

You might have been shown mercy but if you caused a financial problem through an accountancy error then someone had to take the impact of your mistake. If it wasn’t you then who was it?

That would be ridiculous, would you expect someone to pay the fine if a builder, or childminder, was late with paying their taxes and got the £900 penalty?

It would be different if they were lying about being eligible for the funding, but when they are eligible, have taken out the service based on the cost and the childminder has messed up her paperwork that's not the clients fault.

I guess the OP could try and put her foot down and not pay for the last term gone but the coming term if left without funding (OP said 2k for past and future invoices) would need to be paid out of her own pocket presumably in advance, so a decision would need to be made about whether to try find alternative childcare now. It’s a very awkward situation.

I imagine more cases like this will occur with mistakes inputting codes every three months if the system doesn’t automatically reject wrong codes.