To complain about these nursery "top-up" fees?

[Missdread]

My son goes to a great nursery, for which we have been paying (through the nose....) for the past year. He turns 3 in August so will be entitled to 15 hours free funding from September. He does three 5 hour morning sessions, so nothing would change. Except today the nursery explains that as they gave a short fall we will be required to pay £5 per session for the 15 hours funded children. Now, after doing some research on county council websites, it appears they are not allowed to do this....

www.parentalchoice.co.uk/choosing-childcare/nurseries/nursery-education-grant-funding

WIBU to complain, potentially leading to them being investigated for the sake of £5per day?!!!!

Many nurseries do this and it is wrong, it goes against the ethos of free early years education. CM's are generally more flexible about how you take your 15 hours but not all of them offer the funded hours.

They are not allowed to do this!
It is illegal.

My ds2 goes for two full days (9-4) we pay £2 a day for his dinner and that's it!

they will be charging you for lunchtime supervision...

they tried this with us when a similar system came in years ago, private nursery. The council stuck to their guns that they were not allowed to do it, they claimed they were justified if a child stayed over lunchtime

in the end I went to collect her and dropped her back for the afternoon session.

Ours had a top-up I think. This was 3 years ago though. Because the funding didn't cover the cost IYSWIM. Vast majority of preschool stuff is private round here don't know if that makes a different.

Our preschool used to ask for a "voluntary" top up payment - which I think made the situation legal.

It was a lovely lovely setting, and they had very high staff/child ratios, which they couldn't have sustained with the government paid fees alone.

People who could afford it happily paid. I assume they came to an arrangement with those who couldn't...