Nursery sundries fee

[lizzlebizzle33]

Hi, so my son goes to nursery for 4 sessions a week (20 hours) and we pay £32 a month for his meals.

Last week I received a confusing letter which stated that the fees would be going up and a chart so you could see how many hours your child goes for and what the price increase will be.

It appeared it was going to go from £32 to £76 which I thought can't be right as that's more than double.

I have just dropped DS off and had a word with the nursery manager and it is right!! From £32 to £76 Just like that.

AIBU to be fuming? For myself and all other parents. I will really struggle to afford this but what other choice do I have but to pay it?

You were getting your child professionally cared for, educated and fed meals for 40p an hour.

You will henceforth be getting your child professionally cared for, educated and fed meals for 95p an hour.

Oh! I was under an assumption that the meals were an extra, not a sole cost. Hence previous post about how to challenge it. But if nursery is only accruing revenue at that hourly rate I don't know how they manage ... others/older kid's parents must be paying more ...?

It’s the parents of the younger kids who pay more and subsidise the free hours @messolini9 because free hours generally don’t kick in till they are 3 (apart from some who get them at 2 in specific, limited, circumstances).

And @messolini9 the government pays the nursery a set hourly rate for the free hours, but it’s not really enough.

Gawd it's confusing - cheers @ArgumentativeAardvaark

The stand-out learning for me from this thread is how nurseries are forced to assume the cost & burden of the free hours. I genuinely thought the vouchers system was fully government-funded. Is it the usual case of weasel-wording the political policy, but shoving the actual cost back onto a 3rd party?

Cross-post Aardvaark - yup, understand now.
Dismaying, but not surprising then.

So the ultimate effect is increasingly harder-to-find nursery places I imagine.

On the subject of low staff wages, I agree that the pay is terrible for the amazing work they do-our nursery staff are wonderful. We get them to babysit some eves and weekends- a win win as DS knows them, they earn some extra cash and we get to go out! It’s not strictly allowed by the nursery but a blind eye is turned. Just a shame that they end up working longer hours to make a decent living.

People haven't read the thread properly. The increase if for the meals portion.
4 meals a week/32 meals for a 4 week month= £32pm sounds like a bargain to me. Might even be a snack and meal every day depending on the hours.

I understand it's a shock to suddenly get a 100% increase though. You'd think that they'd maybe raise it 50% 6 months apart or something.

What sort of food/drink is he offered at nursery? It might help you feel better about the cost.

You mentioned “the vouchers system” @Messilini9. Childcare vouchers is a separate scheme again - that is where your employer can pay you part of your salary tax free in childcare vouchers that are used to pay your nursery fees. Those are available for children of any age and are not means-tested.

Free hours aren’t paid via vouchers, the nursery claim the universal 15 directly and you have to create a government account for the remaining 15 if eligible.

@pikapikachu I think most people have already understood that point and explained that to OP. But the point that you are perhaps missing when you say “the meals portion” is that OP doesn’t pay anything else for the childcare/education because she is only using her 30 funded hours. So her total expenditure, carefully budgeted no doubt, has suddenly doubled.

I'm paying £5 a day for a 2-3 slot at school as younger kids finish early so £100 a months for 5 hours care a week. And they dont feed them yabu

It’s the parents of the younger kids who pay more and subsidise the free hours @messolini9 because free hours generally don’t kick in till they are 3 (apart from some who get them at 2 in specific, limited, circumstances).

It’s alos the tax payer, the owners and the staff. Subsidising people earning up to £100000.00 a year.

Good point @freddiefox, I was simplifying because @messolini9 had specifically asked if parents of older kids paid more.

The point being, I think, that nurseries can’t increase their private fees enough to cover their outgoings, without becoming uncompetitive?

I understand that the doubling in cost was a shock, OP. But...

It works out at 87p per hour he is there.
That has gone up from 32p.

32p per hour!! Did no part of you think bloody hell, THIS can’t be right? What else can you get for 32p per hour?

Can you feed your DC on £4 a day for meals and snacks?

I mean, come on - if you’re working while he’s there you have to be in profit. I’m kind of shocked you’re shocked, tbh.

At 32p per child per hour, I’d be worried the nursery would close down. 90p doesn’t sound much better!

Subsidising people earning up to £100000.00 a year.

I agree, I would love to know how they arrived at that threshold figure.

NoSquirrels the nursery gets more than 32/90p an hour because the government pays an hourly rate to the nursery. (Around £4, varies between local authorities). The 32/90p is what it costs the OP.

Unfortunately, however, the total of those two sums is barely enough to cover costs and leaves nurseries in a very precarious position.

Oh I well understand that, Aardvark - I’m shocked OP hasn’t ever thought the nursery must be in massive deficit. Food included for just 32p an hour!

Good point @freddiefox, I was simplifying because @messolini9 had specifically asked if parents of older kids paid more. sorry wasn’t digging at you, I just find it difficult to listen to people moaning about a subsidiary that hasn’t been properly funded by the government, and there have been lots of very good nurseries closing down.

Eventually all nurseries will end up closing and they will just be school nurseries left.

Ah OK, gotcha now @NoSquirrels . Agreed.

And yes, Freddiefox, it was only when I actually had a child of nursery age that I started to read into all this and was appalled.

Subsidising people earning up to £100000.00 a year.
Purely a vote winner, there can be no other reason. It’s shocking really when you think about how much it must be costing the government to implement ( even badly ) and what that money could be spent on instead.

! Did no part of you think bloody hell, THIS can’t be right? What else can you get for 32p per hour?

why would you when you have been told that it will be "free"?

why would you when you have been told that it will be "free"? there is a campaign to remove the word free, some councils have, but it doesn’t quite fit with what the government are trying to peddle

Thank you for your updates Aardvaark & FreddieFox :)

My DS has had 30 free hrs obv that's term time and they spread it over the yr to even it out, he does 4days 10hrs each so whatever the get from the council is deducted we basically get a termly bill divided into 4mthly payments so the summer one is obv more.

We have paid £400-650 @ mth still even with funded hrs it is what it is and us better than the £900 @ myh before funding.

He is off to school in a couple of weeks wrap around care isn't much cheaper co,bined with holiday care

Our nursery charges £15 extra a day for those receiving the 30 hour funding. My bill is going to go drastically down in September when the hours kick in for us.

The fact remains the OP is whining about what is an incredible deal. Her total care+food+education bill has gone from "virtually nothing" to "hardly anything" and she is still paying a tiny fraction of the true value of what she’s getting.

To couch that in terms of how "fuming" she is that it has "doubled" is incredibly puerile and brings 'entitlement syndrome' to a whole new low.