AIBU regarding Nursery Fees

[SilentEm564]

DH and I recently went to view a nursery.
We were told it would be £250 per week for DS to attend 3 days a week.
We thought it sounded like a lot of money! I was more hoping for £200 for 4 days.
We picked it because it was the nearest one to our house, so nothing spectacular about it.
We live just outside of London.
Would some other posters mind sharing how much nursery costs for them please? I'm now left wondering if my original cost expectations were unreasonable? It's hard to judge because a lot of nurseries don't put fees on their websites.

Jannier I wasn’t suggesting that childminders go over their ratios - I know they can’t.

I was just saying that people in here are comparing the nursery day rate in the baby room (where the ratio is one carer to two babies) to a childminder charging £3.50ph, when that childminder obviously must have a different number (and therefore different age) of children in her care, or she’d be earning under NMW. It isn’t a fair comparison.

£80 per day in the SE.

£68 per day in Surrey

Sashkin......many cm's do earn under NMW its only when you have 3 full time spaces full and wrap around care that you can earn a reasonable living if you only have 1 or 2 children for most of your time your earning less than nmw, which is why an increasing number are leaving childminding.
Most settings are struggling with funded places making it even harder if you can use apprentices at under NMW by quiet a lot and get a grant for each one you can just about break even as a nursery on funding but do we want our children cared for mainly 16 to 18 year olds there instead of full time education and often not kept on after qualifying as they then get paid NMW? the government are forcing nursery's and other settings into making hard choices not always in the childs best interest.

Tanith....the state offer 3 year olds 30 hours funding if both parents work more than 16 hours and earn less than £200k....however they do not pay the providers who are in the main private business's the going rate, whilst insisiting staff have a minimum living wage of almost double what they pay for a child to be cared for plus the business has to pay pension sick pay and maternity pay on top. The business also has to pay often extortionate business rates and rent for premises as well as normal daily costs registration cost etc.....and have to abide by set ratios for the number of adults of children. This is forcing many settings to close or to use untrained young teenage apprentices who have to either stay in Education to the age of 18 or do an apprenticeship so do not necessarily want to work with children but prefer that option to school, Apprentice wages are very low.
A nursery can have 1 adult to 3 babies under 2 raising to 1 to 8 for 3 to 5 year olds ( a cm can have 1 to 3 under 5's but only 1 under 1 at any time).

ohps sort Tanith wrong name...

£40 a day. South Wales