nursery fees increase

[martav]

Hi everyone
if you have children attending a private nursery I am curious to hear your stories about how much and how often your nursery has increased the fees. I enrolled my now 27 months child back in Feb 2017, he started the nursery in September 2017 and the fees had at that point been increased of £ 60 per month; I have now received a notice for a further increase of £75 per month which will take place from April 2018. In the email I received it was not mentioned what the increase is for. Is it only my impression or an increase of £135 per month between just before April 2017 and April 2018 is A LOT?!? According to the contract the nursery only needs 4 weeks ‘notice to let parents know about fees increase but apart from that there is no indication of any limit they might have in setting higher fees. Ofsted has nothing to do with the fees and there is no regulatory body concerning that so nurseries can basically choose whatever fee they want. The assumption in a free market is that if you are not happy with a service provider you can look for another one. However I would definitely prefer not having to look for another place, given that I am overall happy with the nursery and my child has formed very good bonds with the teachers and other children! I find unbelievable the amount of power that nurseries have in setting their fees without having any discussion or explanation with parents. If you have any useful information in this regard I would love to hear it! TIA

The biggest overhead for any nursery will be the staff salaries, and there are rules about how many staff per child there should be in nursery settings. Could be your nursery has not been complying with those rules in the past, and needs to increase their fees in order to cover their staffing requirements. I can't think of anything else that would need such a huge increase in fees.

So it looks as though they have an annual increase which takes effect in April every year -
£60 last April
£75 this April.

What is this as a percentage of what you are paying? They presumably have increased utilities, food and staff bills.

You do realise that many nurseries have had to raise their fees to cover the shortfall due to the free hours they are having to provide to prevent them from going under?

They are a private service provider so are free to set their own fees without consulting their customers. Their customers can give the correct notice and leave if they wish.
I suspect it is the introduction of compulsory pensions that is pushing nursery fees up. Nurseries work on very tight margins and any increase in staff costs results in an increase in fees.

National minimum wage is going up in April, as is the amount companies have to contribute to pensions. This will make up part of the increase.
Then there is the increase in 'free' hours to working parents. For each 'free' hour a child receives, it costs the nursery mone. In some parts of the country up to £1 per child per hour is lost on these contracts.
To keep the nursery open, other families see their fees increase.
In many cases it's either that or close the business down.
A loose loose situation for all concerned.

*money

My son starts nursery in May. I went in a few weeks ago to hand over the admin fee. I was handed a letter saying the feeshad increased £10 per day
I thought I'd dropped on initially with a reasonable price.

She did tell me it was due to an increase in staff wages though.

My DS only attends mornings at nursery, his fees have increased by £2.50 a week and it's the first increase they've had in three years. Yours definitely seems a lot to me. That sort of price hike would cripple me.

How many hours a month do you pay for? If its a full time place, 200 hours a month, this is only 37p an hour.

Ours are going up from £3.40 to £3.55 on 1st April.

But it’s a heavily subsidised staff only nursery.

NMW is going up by ~30p / hr in April

So over a 40hr week that is £12, so ~£50 at least for every member of staff per month before overheads. So the level of increase doesn't seem too unreasonable to me.

Nursery staff are massively underpaid for the responsibilities they have.

Ours has gone up 13% from next month, takes it to over £900 a month. Thankfully our 30 hours kicks in at the same time and we’re not planning any more kids. We’ve had increases every year but this was the biggest single one