To challenge the 22% price hike our nursery is trying thru?

[Blankiefan]

Email today re: impact of National Living Wage and other above inflationary cost increases forcing a fee increase. I'd accept a reasonable increase but 22% feels excessive.

In an unrelated admin blunder a couple of months ago, the nursery sent an email to all parents without bcc-info the addresses so we all have all of the email addresses. AIBU to consider contacting all parents to organise a rebellion? I've no idea what this would look like

Maybe really it's more of a wwyd... I'd really rather not move dd.

I wouldn't use a nursery that paid staff minimum wage, how appalling.

Living wage is £7.85 an hour, £9.15 in London.

NI adds another 7% or so, assuming all zero band is used by the nursery,p.

Presumably they will be training the staff, £10 phr won't cover holiday/sickness cover & the pension costs need to be added in

You'll need lots of different insurances inclusing PLI, Employers, maternity insurance cover is a big cost for nurseries

Jesabel it's pretty standard around here - you might struggle to find a Nursery.

Carol - I don't know where you are getting your figures from, but Nurseries aren't - and won't be after the promised increase - getting anywhere near that amount for the funded places. I believe it varies Local Authority to Local Authority.
But your figures are completely flawed apart from that.
You seem to have forgotten all the other staff the Nursery need.....
a SENCo,

a Manager,

someone to do the admin / finance side (is sometimes the manager or deputy, sometimes a clerical person,
someone to cover staff breaks - so one person can't work more than 6 hrs with a 30min break, but the children need to be in ratio all that time
Cover for sick leave
Cover for annual leave (You've allowed)
Cover when staff need to meet with outsdie agencies
Cover when staff need to go to child protection conferences, or Child in Need Meetings, or LAC meetings or PEP meetings, or spend time on the phone or filling in referral forms regarding safeguarding, or regarding getting support for families, or attending CAF meetings or TAF meetings or S4S meetings
Then the 1:8 ration only works out as each child paying 1/8 of costs, for the days and hours there are actually 8, 16, or 24 dc in the room. If there are 9 dc, they still need 2 members of staff. If there are 17dc, they still need 3 members of staff.
Then of course there are children who need a higher ratio than 1:8

It all has to be factored in. Your sums are really simplistic and do not reflect what Nurseries have to pay out.

Nurseries don't just have staff in the room with the children, other staffing costs include time for managing staff, finances, admin including for claiming the free hours, cooking (if food is provided), cleaning, liaising with other organisations (schools, social services etc) and probably others I haven't thought of.

My nursery increased their fees in September 2015 - their 'Annual Increase' which increased prices by £23 a month.

Yesterday I received an email, an 'Annual Increase' starting April. This increase is massive and adds just under £70 to the monthly bill. This works out to us paying over £1000 a month in childcare and this is only for 4 days.

I sent the nursery an email saying it was unfair and reminding them of their previous annual increase and was politely told "yeah it's horrible but has to happen". I would dearly love to get the other parents on board as these increases come to just under 10% in 7 months which is way over inflation and therefore unfair in my books.

If you are on good terms with a few of the other parents you gave nothing to lose but I would speak to them in person rather than send out a group email.

A nursery near me has just received notice of a 60% increase in rent for the hall they use.

I wonder whether there will be another government push to relax ratios in order to justify crap funding for 30 free hours.

Definitely not BU

we just had a similar letter. The increase was 2%

Woo, unfortunately the rise being way over inflation isn't a counter argument. Inflation is an average of lots of things - with the intro of the living wage, plus possibly rent hikes, fewer subsidies for training etc - nursery costs will be rising by more than inflation too.

HOW DO COSTS compare to other local providers?

I would dearly love to get the other parents on board

and do what though?

You can't force them to drop their prices-they will go bust and close if they can't make a profit! You could leave and find somewhere local-is there somewhere with places, as convenient and the price you want?

Woo, so costs went up in sept by, what, £1 a day or 10p an hour? And they've gone up a further, what, £3 a day or 30p an hour?

Sounds like they didn't factor NLW into the earlier rise, that may have just covered compulsory pension enrolment.

BackforGood - guess I am lucky that there is a choice of high quality nurseries where I live.

Hi Barefoot,

We do 4 days and the first increase was £23 for the month. In total he does 160 hours a month so that works out to 14p an hour.

The new increase is £67 a month for the same hours, so that's 41p an hour. In total that's an extra 55p an hour and when it's put like that, it doesn't seem much, it's the fact they've had 2 'Annual Increases' in 7 months.

They are the same price as other nurseries but as our DS loves it there and we think it's a good place too, we're just going to have to suck up the increase and tighten our belts elsewhere (our belts are already pretty tight!).

If they'd hit us with his increase in September 2016, I wouldn't mind so much as it'd then be a true annual increase.

I used to help run a charitable pre-school on the financial/admin side - honestly making the books balance is horrific and we were focused on breaking even, getting grants to buy equipment etc. The cleaning costs, toys & equipment replenishment, art & crafts consumables - there was so much we would have liked to have money to spend on!!!

When was this upcoming increase in minimum wage announced? Was it the autumn statement? If so then it was after the last Sept price increase but will come into place before the next September. If the setting is just about breaking even (as most are) then they have no choice but to increase fees now.

This just illustrates that this country needs proper subsidised childcare

Not the half arsed smoke and mirrors attempts provided by the last 3 governments. Childcare vouchers, free hours are just gimmicks. Illusions that government is helping with childcare when in reality they are doing the bare minimum.

Woo, yeah, I agree the timing is a bit poor! But I suspect, whether through oversight or it not having been announced, they didn't factor in the NLW properly. They are unlikely to have the reserves to bear it for the six months to September. I think you could ask them to make their next annual rise April next year, though...

< I'm assuming they are an independent or small chain, not a large chain>

The going rate for staff in a local nursery is NMW. That means they pay their apprentice £3.30 per hour and £6.70 to others as they are all under 25. The staff (understandably) lack commitment, so every time they are poorly or take a duvet day, the nursery incurs bank staff costs. They make a loss on EYE funded places and the more children they accept with 2 year old funding, the higher their costs and staffing burden becomes, because of the sheer amount of bureaucracy and meetings that go alongside each place.

Katymac I have every sympathy for you. I wouldn't recommend that anyone sets up a small nursery these days, as you are working in a ridiculously stressful environment without the return you deserve.

This just illustrates that this country needs proper subsidised childcare

Indeed it might, but it is never going to happen!

Childcare vouchers, free hours are just gimmicks. Illusions that government is helping with childcare when in reality they are doing the bare minimum.
It sounds like they're reducing the costs to parents and leaving the nursery to pick up the slack - so keeping nursery workers on min wage. Rather than helping the nursery's actually provide an excellent service for children and their carers. Which is perverse.

The "free hours" aren't really about childcare though. They are to mirror provision of early years education at 9-3 nurseries.

It would be better if the government said "here is the subsidy we are giving to private providers, at least this much should be taken off the hourly bill" rather than banning top ups and meaning some providers can't offer it at all, especially smaller ones.

The free entitlement did work when it was introduced by the Labour government. It was properly funded and intended to provide Early Years education for all 3 and 4 year olds.

Since then, the funding has been eroded until it is no longer viable for providers.

I don't believe the current Government ever intended to fund the free 30 hours properly. They had no plans to do so. It was a last minute election promise designed to trump the other main parties.

The free entitlement was a Labour initiative and an expensive one. The current Government would like to do away with it altogether, but it's also a popular initiative. They don't want to take the risk of angering parents and education experts by abolishing it themselves.

The last coalition government showed them that providers were prepared to work with less money and make it up in other ways.
So they made a hugely generous promise of 30 free hours, knowing that they wouldn't have to foot the bill: providers would either work with it (more fool them, but they certainly weren't going to argue them out of it!) or they would back out of the scheme.

The free entitlement scheme would then collapse as more and more providers would stop offering it and the Government could then scrap an expensive Labour initiative and blame the providers: "We did try, but they wouldn't play ball!"

Hence CarolDecker's "Squealer" like attempt to convince everyone that we're all living in clover.

Barefoot in Scotland it was education before the 600hrs but is now called 'Early Years education and childcare'. Not sure if you have the same system in England but in Scotland (or my area at least) children generally go for a morning or afternoon session at a school nursery the year before starting school.
We have private nurseries and childminders who do 'wrap around care' take 3yos to the school nursery for an education session (paid for by their funding) and collect them. In those cases the extra funding doesn't actually save parents much money as eg as for when they were 2.5hr sessions they will still have to pay for the CM session as 3hr 10 min isn't long enough or pay the private nursery to do the transport. (CMs can't claim funding anyway).
Now they are trying to encourage providers to do longer sessions so parents can use more than a session worth of funding in one day, so it would save them money.
But schools who need to do morning and afternoon sessions to cope with the number of children are struggling with even 3hr 10 min sessions as it that already makes it longer than the school day (especially as staff have to have lunch breaks etc and maintain the ratios) so they are starting earlier and finishing later than the normal school day. This is up to a 30 min difference so parents with DCs at school are more likely to drop their nursery DC off late or pick up early, especially if they live a distance away. And it causes problems for CMs who do before/after school too...

And its not popular with private Nurseries as to accept the longer funding they then need to provide the 'education' aspect, be inspected by HMie etc..which would greatly increase the costs ...but seeing as it is now childcare too maybe some children can get less 'education' for their funding.... all a bit of a mess. (Sits on hands to stop further rant )