Nursery have used funded hours to repay furlough money

[KittyKat1983]

Hi, just after a bit of advice if anyone knows where I stand with this. My DD was due back at nursery next week as I am going back to work. She gets 30 hours funded by the government which I have been renewing all through lockdown and she hasn’t attended since March. The nursery are now saying we will have to pay for her place as they have used the funded hours to repay the furlough money they claimed off the government. Does anyone know if they can actually do this? It’s left me stuck because I can’t afford to pay the full rate so won’t be able to return to work. Thanks in advance.

@katie2812

Hi,

My sister works in a nursery. She wasn't allowed to be furloughed by government as her nursery was recieving the allocated payments from government for set children. It meant she went without pay as this is very little as her nursery relies on private children. When my sister cot acted HMRC to ask whether she could be furloughed they said no because she is a key worker and her nursery is receiving the funding. I think your nursery has incorrectly furloughed their employees hence why they are having to pay it back and use government money. I would say they aren't allowed to use allocated money as that's to fund your child's place not to pay their debts.

Hope this helps

The issue with this is that the government allowed a lot of nurseries to claim furlough payments before deciding they could not.

Staff had already been paid. The government allows staff to be paid from the funded hours so have claimed the money back from that.

Had there not been the confusion over the furlough the nursery would have had the choice over using the funding money or staff going unpaid. It's highly likely the OP would be in the same position, but she'd have had some notice.

Thanks all, I’m still reading. Lots of conflicting advice so I’ve contacted the local early years advisory team just to clarify. Will let you know how I get on.

So the nursery might have acted with the best intentions and now found there was an error with their understanding/the advice given by the gov. But that doesn’t mean they can pass the cost of that to their client.

They are a business, businesses are expected to deal with their own losses. Not pass those to their customers to ease the strain on themselves. The contract between the client and the business is separate to the businesses arrangements for funding with the government. You can’t just start recouping your losses from clients. If parents agree to that, then fine. But it’s not a given that the nursery can just offset their loss against their clients.

If Tesco make a loss one week I don’t expect to pay extra for my milk the following week so there cash flow remains constant.

@KittyKat1983

Thanks all, I’m still reading. Lots of conflicting advice so I’ve contacted the local early years advisory team just to clarify. Will let you know how I get on.

The early years team are a good bet.

Hopefully they, and nurseries, banding together could push the government to do something to help nurseries who were messed up by the cock up.

It's another example of women being disproportionately affected by government cock ups during this whole saga.

Let us know how you get on OP. I’m interested to hear the outcome.

I will - my work are not going to be happy if I can’t go in, I’ve just come to the end of a period of maternity leave

It may not necessarily be the nurseries fault but let's face it, it's highly unlikely the OP will be supported by the gov and have childcare paid by them so nursery will have to deal with the brunt of it. Assuming this probably has happened on a larger scale given how gov dealt with nurseries and furlough, nurseries will have to be the ones to sort it out with the gov not individual parents who would be left without childcare.

Also, are the hours not claimed by the parent and the nursery just act as an agent collecting the money? OP has been reconfirming, but hasn’t been receiving childcare. It sounds like gov has encouraged nurseries to make claims, in doing so, they are making claims on behalf of parents who haven’t been receiving the care. Parents know the hours are to be exchanged for childcare. Poorly managed.

The funded hours are allocated on a termly basis. You can't save them up to use at a time that is convenient to you. Nurseries get paid their funding each term for every child registered with them, just because you chose not to send her when the nursery reopened you didn't terminate your contract with them so she was still using up a registered place. Similarly if you moved to a different provider in the middle of a term you couldn't move your funding because your previous provider would have already been paid for it. It is now the summer holidays anyway when the funded hours don't apply so yes, you will need to pay for your childs place during all the holidays unless they provide the ability to stretch the funded hours across the whole year in which case you would be obligied to pay for the differnce each month.

This is pretty crap for you OP but for all those saying it isn't fair for the nursery to claw back the money - how do you propose they survive because the answer will be, they can't. They were fucked over, made to stay open even if their overheads weren't covered and so many parents refused to pay to keep their places.

When there are no places left anymore because so many settings have had to close, then parents will probably regret not agreeing to continue paying when they could.

@MummytoCSJH

It may not necessarily be the nurseries fault but let's face it, it's highly unlikely the OP will be supported by the gov and have childcare paid by them so nursery will have to deal with the brunt of it. Assuming this probably has happened on a larger scale given how gov dealt with nurseries and furlough, nurseries will have to be the ones to sort it out with the gov not individual parents who would be left without childcare.

Nurseries won't be able to afford to so they'll close and then the parent will have to find more childcare in an environment where so many have already had to close.

The anger aimed at nurseries and childminders during lockdown was so misguided.

Kiri, I understand that but them not being able to afford it doesn't mean individual parents - notably mothers - should be disadvantaged. This is between the nurseries and the gov.

@pennylane83 thanks for your reply. It wasn’t that I chose not to send her back when they re-opened (I asked repeatedly for her to go back but there were no spaces for her due to the limited numbers in the bubbles). It’s only now that they have space to have her back, which is why I arranged to start back to work now rather than weeks ago.

@KittyKat1983 when is your child due to finish? If it turns out that you do have to pay full fees could you ask them to meet you half way as it sounds like you’re both struggling through no fault if your own and ask if they could stretch the payments owed for now till end August over a set time period and increase your payments for say 6 months rather than a massive bill to pay them all at once?

She’s starting in reception in September so she was only going to be there for 5 weeks anyway!

They were told to do so by the government. This isn't fake or illegal.

You should still have the funded hours per week that she would normally have? Not the hours missed but the hours going forward. So, no you shouldn’t be having to pay the full cost it should be cost less the amount of funded hours. You don’t bank all the funded hours not used l.

Of course if you can afford to pay you should come to some sort of agreement with them. I specifically mentioned in my original comment that I would not have been able to afford this and therefore would have had to leave my job. Another single mother on benefits - if I could even claim them after intentionally quitting. Mine is hypothetical but there will be lots of parents in that position now.

Also are you using the tax free scheme because that will save you 20% as well if you’re eligible

@itwilldropoff yes we are

Also as PP have stated. You don't get to choose your 30hrs funding. These are only in term time and between 9-3 unless your nursery has set stretched hours and continues in the half terms. It's now the summer which means yes, you will have to pay.

Our DD became eligible for the 30 hours in April (whilst on lockdown). I want to ‘stretch’ the hours, but our nursery said that will have to happen from September now.

She’s just returned & there were only 2 weeks left in term (60 hours) so we’ve had to spread 60 hours over the Summer hols.

Basically they only allowed me to spread what was ‘remaining’ for the rest of the term as the LA don’t allow to backdate & use hours not claimed for the week before?

@MedicalMystery1

You should still have the funded hours per week that she would normally have? Not the hours missed but the hours going forward. So, no you shouldn’t be having to pay the full cost it should be cost less the amount of funded hours. You don’t bank all the funded hours not used l.

There are no funded hours in the summer holidays.

Don’t jump the gun with switching nurseries OP, just be warned the funding can’t just be switched just like that to a new setting.

There’s a deadline at the start of each term. Jump ship and you’ll still have to pay full whack until September because funding can’t transfer until the new term.

I did have the info on what nurseries were allowed to do with funding and furloughing, need to dig it up because I can’t remember - what I do know is that nurseries were royally screwed over which is why a lot of parents will now face the consequence. Off to dig....

Given the headache this will cause nurseries it may mean the end of the goodwill of averaged hours.

Especially as a lot of people don't understand how the funding works and don't realise there iis actually only funding 38 weeks of the year. The nurseries just average the bill out.