30 hours free childcare

[trowelmonkey1]

We've just had a letter from DS nursery about the 30 hours free childcare we'll get from September. We currently pay £626 per month for a full time nursery place, which includes a discount for the 15 free hours we are entitled to. Due to a "revised" pricing structure, the monthly price for a full time nursery place that includes the 30 free hours will be £636 . So in effect, we are having to pay an additional £10 pm to receive an extra 15 free hours

I'm curious to know what people's opinions are on this? I'm very British and don't like to complain. I also know that I should be grateful for any assistance in nursery fees. However, it's seem utterly illogical that something that is supposed to be free will actually end up costing us more money.

I am going to raise it with nursery, but I'm not sure what it wil achieve. From what I understand the whole 30 hours free childcare has been poorly thought out by the government and it is vastly underfunded.

If a nursery is employing a level 3 key worker for a two year old, that person can only look after four children. If the nursery only takes the funding without making additional charges there is no way the can cover costs of salary, utilities, rent, resources, training, recruitment etc. The only option is to pay less, employ less experienced staff and I'm sure that would impact on quality of provision.

I would like to point out that each local authority is offering a different amount to childcare providers once they have taken their cut.
I would be making a loss of 72p per hour if I offered funding. I have chosen not to at this time.

I've spent the last year as chair of our pre-school. The 30 hours will basically put many nurseries and Pre-schools out of business. For the "free" hours, they get paid an amount per session/hour for each child. Unfortunately this doesn't represent the true cost to the nurseries, hence why many will be effectively be putting up their cost per hour. The more funded children there are in a setting, then the more they will struggle! Childcare is already very underpaid, and there have to be certain levels of staffing so no opportunity to cut costs there. Add in Auto Enrolment pensions, and it's an expensive double whammy on top of the regular cost increases.

So I totally understand that on paper it does seem very unfair, but unfortunately it's been forced on the settings.

But if the nursery simply takes what they get off the council and knocks it off the bill, the nursery is not losing out . They're ripping people off

Absolutely swizzlestar, places are in danger of going out of business and then we will have a huge childcare deficit in some areas. Where I live is already short on preschool provision and the two local nurseries have long waiting lists. The whole thing makes me so angry as it is sold as a definite "30 free hours" when that is not the case in most areas .

They are not ripping people off!
They are running at a loss and subsidizing the 'free' hours

Sorry, I'm being a bit dense obviously; how would the nursery lose out if they took their payment from the council off the parents' bill? Say they get £200 per month from the council, just take £200 a month off the parents' bill. I honestly don't understand the problem.

I get that if you only use 30 hours it could be tricky. You'd have to have 2 sessions with an expensive hour inbetween. But for full timers of 8 - 6 it seems simple

I don't know why nurseries can't simply discount the amount they get off the council for the 30 hours off the full bill. Ie if five days is £200 a week (private, no funding place) and nursery get £135 off council (£4.50 per hour, 30 hours) bill parents £65 gir the week. They will still be getting 200 a week.

OP it sounds like they are dwindling you by effectively charging full price then getting a top up off the council.

Strawberrygate

Using completely made up figures if the council will pay say £5 per hour for the "free hours" but the nursery's regular rate was say £10 per hour the nursery will be down £5 per hour times the extra 15 hours. Therefore when the hours go up to 30 hours the nurseries are taking a big hit which they make up by charging more for the non free hours. so again using example above the £10 may now be £15 per hour.

If they don't make up the loss from somewhere (ie. increasing non-free hours rates) they will go bust and there will be no nurseries or none that can offer the free hours anyway.

Problem is also that ,most nurseries are now having to pay into pensions for their staff which they didn't used to have to do and that is an extra expense to them which will be added into the fees.

Iirc the rules are that the hours are either funded or not. So if they can claim £4 ph that's a free hour that cannot be charged for.

The thirty hours isn't mandatory, I know in my county through my job that not a lot of providers are interested in offering it due to the amount they'd be paid, the funding rate for this financial year has actually gone down in my county for some provider types.

The local authority have probably dropped the level of funding that they were previously offering.
It is my understanding as a provider that we cannot simply take the funding amount of the total bill.
It must be split into free hours and chargeable per day. Believe me no provider is choosing to do it this way. It is a real pain in the bum!

The providers claim by total number of weeks per term here, we don't ask them to break it down per day as part of their claim but obviously they can do for their administration purposes.

That does sound bonkers. I will be getting a slightly smaller bill when i get 30-the system is bonkers. In your shoes i'd be asking to revert to 15h.

I've looked a bit closer at the maths. A full time place (7.30-6, 5 days a week) for a 2/3/4 year old currently costs £9435 a year at my son's nursery. That's what the nursery charges and excludes any discount from childcare vouchers and the 15/30 hour free entitlement.

Now I'm assuming (but please do correct me if I'm wrong) that a nursery isn't allowed to have a different pricing structure depending on whether or not a child is entitled to X amount of free childcare. That means that under the new pricing structure of the nursery, the cost of a full time place for a 2/3/4 year old jumps to £12,584 - an increase of 33% Thats one hell of a price hike for parents of a 2 year old with no free childcare entitlement.

It's shitty planning on the part of the government to introduce a scheme that is so poorly funded. But then I should expect very little else from the Tories.

It's not even just auto-enrolment pensions that are a problem. Most settings have seen business rates rocket - some have doubled or even tripled from April. Living wage has increased year on year, and is set to continue to increase to £9 by 2020. That's for all staff, but clearly if you're paying an unqualified staff member £9 you then have to pay yet more to your qualified/managerial staff to attract and retain them, and agency pay has also increased accordingly. The requirement for staff undertaking level 3 to have grade c maths and English has resulted in a drastic shortage of apprentices, and though that's now been lifted it will take time to filter through. Apprentice training costs will have to be covered by some settings from
September. Statutory sick pay can no longer be claimed back. Training costs have increased. Utilities and food cost more, dbs checks are now subject to an annual update fees, insurance costs are rising.

Meanwhile, funding is often underfunded and will be fixed until 2020 at least. Whilst the government pay at least £4.30 some is creamed off by the local authority for admin costs. Some is set aside to find children with disabilities, children living in deprived postcodes, or to incentivise settings with degree qualified staff (i.e. Employ a staff with a teaching qualification and we will pay you an extra 9p per hour!! Whoop!). The end result can be truly woeful - in some areas it's £2 or more an hour less than the going rate.

The cost of childcare was always set to rise due to increases in the costs handed down by local/central government anyway. The underfunding of the free hours has just compounded that need for a rise unfortunately.

My nursery aren't doing the 30 hours.

My DD does 4 full days at present and her hourly rate goes up when we access the 15 free hours as you lose the "full paid sessions" discount. As a result when going onto 15 free hours we saved about £20 a month.

I'd like just a deduction of what they get from the Government from my bill. Their income would therefore be the same.

To those saying that nurseries who offer the 30 hours scheme are obviously poor quality - prices are cheaper outside of the south east. We pay £36.50 per day 8-6, £3.65 per hour. When DC's 15 hours kick in, they knock 15 x £3.65 off our weekly bill in term time. There's no additional charges for meals etc. The government fund the nursery £4.88 per hour as I understand it, so they are in pocket.
This is an Ofsted rated Good nursery in the West Midlands, well equipped with well qualified staff and a very low staff turnover; we've used them for the last 7 years.
If the government pay the nurseries £4.88 per hour, then any nursery charging £48 a day or less is in pocket and nowhere round here charges close to that. Am I missing something?

Why not forget hours and use a value? Say full time nursery fees are £200 pw. If each bunch of subsidy is worth, say, £150 per week, then discount by this amount. That way nursery still gets paid £200 per week, mum and dad pay anything over the £150 and status quo is retained.

Littlestgirlguide - the government might pay an average of £4.88 an hour, but some areas only receive the minimum of £4.30. Of that, the LA will take a cut for admin. They will also pay a base rate plus extras, so for example they might receive £4.30, pay a basic rate of £3.20 plus 10p an hour for flexibility, 10p for employing a qualified teacher, then retain 50p an hour to support children with disabilities and 30p for admin. Leaving the setting with £3.50 in reality, way less than the advertised £4.88

That's odd. When we got the free hours - 15 then we saved £1000 a year. You didn't get 15hrs of their nursery sessions as the government only paid a max amount which wasn't enough to cover their rates but we still made a saving

Thanks for explaining that banana.