Please help - nursery fee’s too high? Need someone “in the know”

[31weeksgone]

I was just wondering if anyone could help me with a question about our nursery.

I’d like to caveat this with saying that they are a brilliant nursery and we’re in a very expensive Southwest town however I’m wondering if their consumables charge is just too high. I know it’s rough for childcare staff right now, but it’s also rough as a parent of twins after one maternity leave and one maternity pay.

We have one year-old twins so I’m paying this fee twice and we receive no sibling discount per day after the free government hours which I know aren’t actually free but should help top it up a little bit. The nursery is charging £80 per day top up consumable fee making my nursery bill for two one year old twins about £2000 a month (on top of the free childcare hours).

I know a consumable fee is optional would you be talking to the nursery about this?

I’ll attach the photo of the fee’s to see if anyone else can make sense of it.

see below, 1258 per month per baby, 2516 per month for the twins after the funding?

This isn’t bashing any nursery by the way, ours is completely brilliant but the most in demand nursery up the road is only £23 on top per days, this is between 52-70 per day per twin on top of government working funding.

I wonder if it is really consumables but rather paying for the extra-hours the kids are in nursery.
Some nurseries top up government funding this way as it is not enough. Full time kids may be subsidizing the ones doing the free hours only too.

Probably, time to visit a few nurseries, get some "quotes" and compare.

You could discuss with the management but the cost difference is high so unlikely they can match.

How are you getting £80 per day from that table? Looking at the first column and row,if you sent one child there for one day per week it says the monthly top up fee is £119.85. Assuming there'll be at least 4 days per month that is (£120÷4=) £30. I haven't worked out the other days and appreciate you're having to pay double for twins but you compared with the other nursery at £23 so £30 is a lot closer than £80. Unless I've misread the charges table completely! If this is in Bath then sympathies. Mine are now in primary school but we were paying top up fees of about £12 per day a few years ago so things must've shot up.

I understood it similar to this poster.

If one day a week is £119 a month, then it can't possibly be £80 a day for consumables.

To find the yearly cost you multiply the monthly cost by 12. So, 119x12= £1428

Then divide that the annual cost by 52 to get the weekly cost, 1428/52 = £27.46. It's £27.46 a day I think? Which is high, but nowhere near £80 a day.

That's for 1 day a week per month tho. She says it's 1258 so I assume they're in nursery 4 days per week which does come out at £72 per day. Seems mad the cost is so different per day to just 1 day per week. Unless my maths is really bad.

Thats a huge amount. We also have a DC under 2 in a nursery 4 days a week, we’re in the South east. For 4 days a week from September with the 30 hours (22.4 stretched hours) we will be paying £850 a month. That includes the consumables fees and the nursery has an onsite chef preparing all the meals, extracurricular activities and all nappies and creams supplied.

But that's because the funding is only for 30 hours a week, 38 weeks of the year. For one day a week you're only paying for consumables because the funding covers all of your hours. On four days a week you're having to pay some fees in addition to the consumables charge. The £72 a day is nursery fee (according to the asterix there is no consumable fee for day four).

Yes of course. Sorry I didn't read the 4th day part. I have enough trouble making sense of my own nursery bill 😂

They need to provide you with a breakdown of what exactly the fees cover.

30hrs funding is only22 hrs if stretched throughout the year and the table seems to be implying that covers 2 days? With a fee for food, nappies etc on top.

The way I read it, the first two days are cheaper (£30 a day-ish) because they include the funded hours. By the time you reach day 3/4, you’re essentially paying a full day rate because you’ve run out of funded hours with the first 2 days. That’s why only 1 and 2 days have asterisks that it’s the consumables charge.

If the nursery is open year round, it makes sense that days 1+2 (20 hours total if early start is before 8 and late is after 6), it makes sense only the first 2 days are covered by ‘free’ hours because they need to prorata it from term time only.

Those rates are similar to the nursery my DD goes. I asked to have a breakdown of the parental contribution as they call it, just to understand how it is done. After 8 emails back and forth with different team members they said to me that they were not allowed to tell me. I could have taken it further but my DD still had a couple of years there and didn't want to make any fuss.

This is confusing. Why is 1-2 days so much cheaper per day? I took my nursery to task over charging top up on funded days. They backed down, but that was ten years agon

Because the first two days are covered by funded hours, the others aren't.

Because her 22 funded hours cover those. By day 3 and 4 shes paying full private rates.

Because they're covered by the 30 hours of funding per week. OP's children spend 4 days in nursery meaning she has to pay more to cover the rest of the fees owed.

Sorry for lack of replies - I managed to hide my own thread from myself. Clearly I’m sleep deprived and misunderstanding most things right now, thank you for making it clearer I hasn’t really considered how far the free hours would stretch, so silly 🤦🏼‍♀️

In case this helps someone: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/jul/12/father-refund-nursery-in-england-fees-investigation?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social_img&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawLni3JleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHuz2HSN7_nGxXNKWOX4ZCOpivaLIOORBJZy8sHR5vP-SFFQVBNh0Bck-Zw2a_aem_VgX0A5FiOf9j6XTZufaokg#Echobox=1752314587