Funded hours only £30 per week less

[Periornot]

When I'm entitled to funded hours (15 age 3), nursery fees will only drop £30 per week. Is that standard? Chain nursery. Open all year. Hoped it would be more. Around £360 instead of £390 per week.

Its only 30 funded hours term time. So if you’re stretching it over the whole year it’s only about 21 hours a week - that might be what you haven’t factored in

Do they allocated the hours in sessions, and charging you for breakfast/lunch

As PP said, it's only term time that you get the hours, plus you can also still be billed for meals/nappies/activities

No way is that right however they work it out!

That is not right even if the setting are stretching the hours.

It doesn't seem like a lot of discount. DDs 30 hours were fully funded but the nursery was only between 9 and 3 and then closed 14 weeks of the year including 3 weeks at Easter. It wouldn't suit a lot of working parents.

Doesn't seem right at all. Ask for their breakdown of costs.

OP said they only get 15 (not 30) though - this is the case if a person earns over £100k. So, stretched over the year, it would be about 12 hours, I think?

Still seems to not be worth very much, but I can't work out if what's quoted is right. I would ask the nursery.

We stretched our 30 hours and it actually worked out as 24 hours, so three 8-hour days.

They only offer funded hours for part of each session. The rest of the hours in the session are charged at an hourly rate which is much higher than the hourly rate would be if a whole unfunded session was divided into an hourly rate. For funded hours there is also a charge per hour for essentials.

Sorry OP that sounds deliberately designed for you not to get any real benefit. The pricks.

It doesn’t seem a lot of discount. My kids did two days and that allowed 12 hours to be used, this gave us a £250 ish discount for 8 or 9 months of the year.

I would be querying that with your Local Authority's Early Years team ASAP.

We have pretty much the same situation - for us it is about £5 less per week. I think those of us with only 15hrs are more likely to be caught up in this way - and it's not just if you're a high earner, it applies if 1 parent is working and 1 is a student (our situation)

That’s a shit way of doing it, the point of the funded hours is for you to not have to pay.

However, the money settings are given is so low, (often half the normal daily rate) that in order to take a child with the funded hours, you make a loss.
I am a childminder and so I encourage parents to use their 30 hours at nurseries and not with me. It’s not a great system at all.
Would you consider a school nursery?

I know the government pay them a paltry amount for funded hours so they have to be inventive. They just make a big deal of offering free funded hours and then charge a subsidy for them, along with a much higher price for the other hours, making it negligible.

I can't work at the moment due to long covid. Making a loss actually as optimism that will get better meant I have t shut down business yet. When my oldest was younger I offered to unofficially subsidise hours with a childminder, which we were both happy with. They then went to pre prep which at least stated up front they didn't do funded hours.

On waiting lists for school nurseries and other nurseries too. Shortage of childcare in our area, so it is normal to pay a premium here.

That cant be right. I did 2 full days before i got free hours and it was £510 a month, now DS goes 3 full days a week and it costs £280 a month.

Ah just read its 15 hours you get. Possibly right then with the hours pro rata

Yes unfortunately they are using loopholes. The extras fee has to be optional tho so you could provide nappies food etc and they have to take that off.