Nursery top ups

[Alrowley]

Hello,

My Daughter will attend nurser 9-3 mondays and friday year round.

They’ve split the 15 hours funding to 10 year round for 50 weeks.

It’s £202 a month for 1 day 9-3,

I’m being charged £219, as they just added two days together and deducting the government fee of £178 !! Surely this isn’t right.... they’re charging me for the shortfall in the hourly rate...

I expected a charge of 2 extra hours 10 funded plus 2 extra used every week for 50 weeks....

Also they said no extra charge for meals etc as of yet...

Surely its 52 weeks not 50...

It'd be 11.4 hours over 50 weeks, assume they shut for Christmas and Easter?

My DDs Nursery do this, calculate the cost of the year deduct the funding then divide the cost by 12 so you pay the same cost each month.

Is the £202 without meals and funding? They are allowed to charge for meals and snacks and for the lunch hour as well, but if you're worried ask Nursery for a breakdown of the costs. They can also include nappies/wipes and others in their charges to you.

I pay £306 a month for 3 days, but that covers 3 meals each day (breakfast, main meal at lunchtime and a evening supper) plus 2 snacks, covers a dance lesson from a professional dancer on one of the days, and also the lunch hours and "wrap around" care (they charge for 7.30-9am and then 3-6pm but I can use them for all those hours if I want even though the funding "stops" at 3pm)

They are not allowed to charge extra for each hour. I suppose they could say the hours don't cover one of the sessions so only give you one session 'free'?

They are allowed to charge for food though, so when my children were funded I paid about £10 a day for food.

Well, they said meals were included, she is toilet trained and aged 2.

She attend for 12 hours out of her 15 funded hours each week.

All they said is they stretch the funding 10 hours every week for 50 weeks as they close 2 weeks at christmas and do not charge for that.

She just said that two days are £404 minus the government of £187 which equals to you paying £219 each months. I was just confused as I thought they would count each funded hour as a nursery hour and I would pay for the remaining 2 hours each week at their usual rate.

Even if this charge of £219 is for meals, that’s £52 I am paying per week, which is £26 a day for meals!

I will ask for a break down of costs but feel they’re going to find me picky and hate me hahah.

Although they can't charge you directly for the shortfall in govt funding v their hourly rate (which seems very high based on those figures and I'm in the SE!), they can make additional charges. So while their £202 per month for a day will include meals, the funding won't so they can charge for that. There may well be an admin fee included, and then additional costs for the hours over the stretch funding.

But definitely ask to see a breakdown. Funded hours are a great idea in principle, but nurseries get about £4ph from the govt which rarely covers their rates, and then parents find themselves having to pay for something that is advertised as being free!

It's because they are stretching it over 50 weeks. Funding is only for 37 so you pay full price for 13 weeks. So if it was £50 a day over the year you'll pay for 26 sessions which is £108 a month plus whatever extras they are charging.

I'm not sure they legally can do this. They cannot credit you for the hours you don't use in term time in fact, if you only use 12 hours the government only pays for 12 hours (the nursery must be lying on the forms). You should only be charged for 12 weeks of sessions (the government pays for 38 weeks) so just over £1200 which divided by 12 is £100 a month. They cannot charge you extra because the government doesn't recharge the full rate. The nursery is breaking rules anyway so obviously thinks it can get away with it.

I think they can charge in this case - it's all about funding allocations and sessions. I had this when mine were at nursery.

Your daughter is t getting enough sessions in - it's not as simple as an hourly rate from the government. They will definitely be adding meals in too

You don't just get 15 hours for 38 weeks fully funded - it is allocated in sessions I believe. So for example, if your child did 3 mornings of 8-1pm say (perfectly reasonable at a private nursery) that's 15 hours but they wouldn't get 15 as it's not enough sessions.

I think you'll only be allowed to claim a certain number of the hours per day, so for ours a full day of 8-6 I can only claim 6 hours and for a shorter day 4.5 hours.

Thanks for your replies, I really appreciate it!

So, my nursery does not charge for any extras. it’s all included in their daily. They told me all their fees are in their daily rates.

7:30-6 is £236 a month
9-3 is £202 a month.

They stretch fund if you want year round.

They told me they get £174 for 15 hours funding from the government.

So the calculation is the days x by however many you do minus £174, gets you a monthly calculation.

So my LO does 9-3 at £219 a month under this calculation.

Under what people have said, you don’t get any funding in holidays and i wrongly assumed they stretched the funding and you still used 10 hours year round, and they use the 5 hours to substitute this.

Does this sound correct?

She attends 6 hours a day 9-3, I have now asked for term time only and since they don’t charge extra and she is using 12 out of the 15 hours, this should now be at no cost to me?

I don't think they'd see it that she's using 6 hours a day, they probably have limit so that she's using 4.5 hours a day.

My 3 year old gets 30 hours term time only, but only goes two days a week. I still pay £181, this is a reduction from £447. You can also use the tax free childcare scheme so that also saves 20%

I haven't looked at this for a while but when I did the government funding was 3 hours per day so if you only used 2 days you were only entitled to 6 hours.

That’s interesting...

Even if they were doing this, it still doesn’t add up.

I’m not so much bothered about the money, It’s about understanding this confusing calculation to be clear at why we’re paying that amount.

I have asked them, and their response was, you get 10 hours week spread over 50 weeks a year and we take off the government funded allowance of £178 a month.

They made it look so simple

Even if they’re only allowing 4.5 hours a day, it still does not total £219 a month 😂😂. Ah, It seems they all do it differently...

I also read on my local authority webpage about this, they cannot charge you for the difference in hourly rate ( this being £5-8 where she is at)

And by just deducting the government funding they are essentially doing this because if they did not, they’d be seriously out of pocket, so the government are to blame really aren’t they...

Instead of saying it’s 10 nursery hours, they are using the ‘15 government hours’ and just deducting this... mmmm i’ll ring the LA and further question it xx

They can't explicitly charge a 'top up' to the hourly rate but they can charge for meals, music lessons etc and 'consumables' which isn't well defined but could cover nappies etc and art materials.

Having said that, my son's nursery did explicitly ask for a top up, before the current rules came in saying they could charge for extras. I complained to the local authority and my local MP but no-one was interested. I pulled my son out instead (it was only one of many issues.). So whether its 'allowed' or not, the fact is really you need to decide you are happy and pay it or look elsewhere.

IT sounds like they are making you top up the rate the gov pay which isn't allowed. They can stretch funding, they can do sessions and make you pay the rest and they can charge for food etc but they can't " top up fees" some nurseries are awful. My nursery thankfully stretched funding then worked out how many hours over the funded hours he went per year and just charged me that. So think I paid for the 10 extra hours a year at their hourly rate

The funded hours are supposed to be free at source, that is; you do not pay anything if your child only attends the funded hours.

However when attending say 9am-3pm there will be a break in sessions, so the lunch time period has a charge.

You need to establish what times the funded sessions run. Without knowing that it is very hard to know which costs are reasonable and which are not.

If nursery is not being of much help, then talk to your local authority early years department who administer the funding.

If it helps it is definitely different to how the 2 I've used have worked. I've never been eligible for the 15 but have been for 30 and at both nurseries ds 1 and 2 did 3 days a week term time only (I appreciate this is different to you). Once the 30 hours kicked in all their hours were free and I only paid for food (£8 and £10 per day respectively). So a massive saving for us. with yours they have factored in the hours over holidays but it does seem expensive.

definitly ask for a proper break down of how the fees are worked out, but can you also be cross with your local authority and the government as this has been really mis sold to parents at the expense of early years settings. Central government/local authorities do not pay a sustainable rate to settings for the care of children and expect settings to suck up the short fall. Funding is often paid late and the amounts are wrong meaning more admin for childcare settings. I know some local authorities have dropped the funding rate this term, just days before the new term started- how can settings plan their budgets around that? It was an excellent way to get parents voting, but they haven’t followed through with enough funding to make it sustainable. You wouldn’t expect a supermarket to give you £100 worth of groceries for £80, but parents are expecting nurseries to give them free care based on what the government have told them. Without the top ups many nurseries can not afford to operate, so although technically they are not meant to charge them, without them, they properly can not afford to offer any funded places at all.

But, do get a proper break down of the bill and make sure you understand how your nursery is offering the funding.

Yes I’m going to ring the LA today and see their take on it! thank you x

The hours funding the nurseries are given is not how much an hour costs the nursery. It’s well known how wrong the system is? So all nurseries do it differently- if you just want the free hours then they can charge for everything else. It will be a different service entirely with no meals, snacks, trips, certain activities and at some, only the three hours every day with no facility for whole day sessions ...... If for you they are an inclusive nursery going all day sessions with no other separate rates of meals etc. then they are just taking your allowance off the total fees which is totally normal.

You can ask them to do term time bills using the funding and then pay more in holidays but they probably found most parents like it stretched and a similar lower bill all year.

I’m not sure why you would ring the LA - they don’t know each nurseries system but The nursery isn’t doing anything wrong- they are deducting your government allowance from your bill.

Is it because you are using an afternoon and a morning session, so are paying for a full day even though you are only using 6 hours?

I thought most nurseries insist you either book full morning or full afternoon or both, as they can't do much with an odd couple of hours here and there. Obviously you don't have to use it but you do have to pay for it iykwim

You’re lucky you’re getting 20 hours to be honest. Mine only allows up to 3 hours a day so even though we use 30 per week over 3 days we’ll only get 9 funded hours, term-time only. The system isn’t properly funded at all and it is a bit of a con to suggest all 3 year olds get 15 free hours a week.