I’m a “Play by the rules” type of woman which is why this is bothering me so much....
I have a son who is almost 4 and last September he started at a pre-school with the 30 funded hours.
All was well until at the start of February the pre-school contacted me to say their computer system was showing that DS was no longer eligible for funding.
My DH contacted HMRC (as the application was in his name) and they told him that DS was eligible and so we relayed this back to pre-school.
A few days later pre-school contacted me to say their system still said he wasn’t eligible so could we ring HMRC again, which DH did who again told him that there was no problem with DS having the funding so we relayed this to pre-school again.
A few days later it happened again, DH spoke to HMRC again and then he told pre-school to contact HMRC themselves to sort it out as they were consistently saying there was no problem with DS’s eligibility code or funding.
The pre-school didn’t phone HMRC though and just continued to contact me saying the same thing about their system and then said they hadn’t received any money/funding for DS for 6 weeks and I said I did not know what the answer was then because DH was being told by HMRC everything was fine. I reiterated again that they really needed to speak to HMRC themselves because there was no more that me or DH could do.
Whilst all this had been going on we had decided to move DS to a childminder (not related to this issue) and I asked her if she’d had any problems registering DS into her care regarding the funding and she said it had all been fine, she’d spoken to HMRC and they had confirmed DS’s eligibility and had settled dates for when she would receive her payments. I told the pre-school that his new childminder hadn’t come across any problems regarding DS’s funding so obviously the fault lay with their system.
We then didn’t hear anything for a few weeks so we assumed they had spoken to HMRC themselves and the problem had been resolved.
However, last week we received a bill from the pre-school for almost £700 which they say is to cover the care they’d provided to DS during the period from when their system had said he wasn’t eligible up until the date he left their setting.
My DH was fuming and basically said they can f**k off if they think they’re getting a penny out of us!! He shut the letter away in a drawer and said there’s no way we’re paying it as DS has always been eligible and if they had cared about the issue they should have bloody rang the HMRC themselves!!
DH has completely moved on from this whereas I’m slightly fretting and feel we should be doing something, not just ignoring it.
AIBU to think we should contact them and try and resolve the matter? DH said we shouldn’t bother as we’ve been trying to sort the funding issues with them for weeks and it’s been like banging our heads against a brick wall.