Nursery free hours, extortionate lunch fees

[tinyem77]

A family I know have been given 30 hours of nursery, however they have been told that lunch fees for the WEEK are £37!!! Single parent, other kids, UC and part time job, how is that even allowed? Surely that cannot be right. I'm sure I never paid more than £10 a week when mine were in junior school??

I think the problem is that the funding nurseries receive from the government to deliver the free hours isn't anywhere near enough to cover their operating costs. So they are having to make the money elsewhere. It isn't great for parents obviously but I don't see scores of nursery owners taking early retirement in the carribean - I don't think they are trying to fleece parents, they are desperately trying to stay in business.

Are they certain it's for a week? Sounds nore like a month? Mine are £2.20 per day...

Childcare providers are not paid enough by the government for the funded hours. Some will offer the 30 hours as 3 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon, which leaves the lunch hour uncovered. That £37 a week won't be just for food. It will be for the hour the child is being looked after.

Funding doesn't cover the costs. Around here they are paid £4 an hour by the government. It doesn't cover costs!

They are perfectly entitled to charge for lunch, lunchtime, consumables such as paint, pens, paper etc......, nappies, wipes and any other extras.

If on UC she will be able to claim some of the fees back.

It will be the nursery making up the difference to the pathetic amount given by their LEA and the actual cost of providing the childcare.

The government don't give enough and even worse the local LEA decide how much to give per hour to the childcare providers in their area Sonora different across the country.

Is it a private nursery?
Ours are £10 a day but it's not just lunch that's all snacks, lunch and minibus usage. My DS eats a better lunch then I do and his "snacks" are more then just fruit it's pasta, noodles, soups etc

Do the 30 hours include the 5 lunch hours? Or are they getting 30 childcare hours and paying for an additional 5 lunch hours?

£7.40 per day for a meal plus 1hr of childcare sounds about right.

What kind of nursery are we talking about?
All year round day nursery? The kind that runs 7am till 6pm type deal?
Term time only preschool that basically runs the school hours, possibly a pack away?

Im not surprised should add. Having worked in both the main types - my day nursery was open 7 till 6 all year round. To make the maths much more simple, we offed the funded hours term time only between 9-12 and 1-4. A lot of our preschools came 9-4 and had to pay for the lunch hour. It was £7 for that hour when I was there 4 years ago, and it included a hot two course lunch. It was the only way we could keep afloat, the 30 hours funding is so little. So a term time funded 9-4 place was £35 a week.

Now the other preschool I worked at was independent but operated by a school in a mobile hut. Open from 9-3:30 term time only. Again, funded hours were between 9-12, 12:30 - 3:30. That half hour lunch would cost £2 at the time (7 years ago) and children bought a packed lunch, so everyone’s £2 basically just covered the staff. But outgoings were so much lower, big one being staff were only paid 6 hours a day term time.

Im not surprised by this at all. Look to the government. If they want to give parents 30 free hours but barely give nurseries £4 an hour to cater for these children and expect top notch early years education from qualified staff then they need to realise the nurseries will get the needed money a different way.

Agree with everyone else.
I presume she is having 3 hours in the morning, then 3 hours in the afternoon. The staff that look after the dc in between the sessions need to be paid too - it isn't just the food ingredients.
Although most Nurseries feed children who are there all day more than just lunch.

The issue is that the funding given to Nurseries for the 'free to parents' hours, doesn't cover the costs of running the Nurseries. That is even before all bills will go up enormously this year (gas, electricity, food, all consumables, work they have to pay for to keep the buildings going, etc etc), so the Nurseries have to look at how they might be able to balance the books rather than close down.