Nursery fees increase

[Elsa2000]

My nursery have written to me to say that they are increasing their fees by an extra £5 per day due to “cost of energy”.

When we add it up, because of the number of kids we have there and days it’s going to cost us over £150 extra a month!

Surely this is very unreasonable? We are struggling as it is.

my cost of energy has gone up too but my salary remains still. I’m pissed off too because this extra cash won’t be going to the staff… it’s going to energy companies.

should I just suck it up or can I say anything. I only have a few months left til we leave for school.

Why are they "unreasonable"?

At the end of the day they want to run a profitable business. They do not owe you affordable childcare. If you cannot afford it send your little ones elsewhere.

I’d like the government to step in

Do you donate money to the government when you have lots of spare cash?

I am guessing this works both ways.

I have a level3 qualification in childcare, many years of experience, I have children of my own, I've been a Nanny, an Ofsted Childminder, 1-1 in Primary working with a child with Down syndrome,
I have a Paediatric 1st aid qualification, safeguarding qualification, Prevent knowledge plus CPD courses eg speech and language, Makaton, Understanding difficult behaviours, Autism etc, many of which I paid for myself!

Up to 3 years ago I worked in a private Preschool 8.40 till 3.30, half an hour unpaid for our lunch break. It was a pack away provision, so all equipment had to be put away every day.
At one point I had over 9 key children, that I like to think I knew extremely well.

I earned minimum wage 7.83 I believe it was at the time.
So approximately £50 a day, £1,090 pcm.

So the point to my essay is that many childcare staff/providers earn so little for the wealth of knowledge and experience they have..
It really is rubbish...

I did notice different nursery increases fees differently. Some nursery increased a bit more some increased a bit less.
My nursery increased 11% for next year and 8% for last year. So in just 2 years time, I have to face nearly 20% fee increase. I now feel sick to even think about childcare cost. Each month I am paying £1689 for childcare alone. On top of this there is food bill increase, energy bill increase..... So sick of it.

We always knew if we couldn’t afford not to pay roughly £10 per hour childcare, not to have children. We prepared very well for that because to expect to pay a pittance for someone to look after them properly and feed them, entertain them seems bizarre to us.

I’m not sure why people expect to earn a living but resent paying a living to the people that look after their children as a job.

Sadly we were all too aware that the Government is unwilling to subsidise us for those Early Years.

LOL £10 per hours??? Where is that, I think you meant £15 to £20 per hour...

I would love to find an actual "Nanny" and pay her £10 to £15. We went through 20 so called nannies that think a nanny is someone that watches your kid all day long... so a babysitter... but most think babysitters and nannies are the same thing.

I would be happy to run the payment as self employed or even cash in hand to maximise the take home for the nanny (right now the way our tax money is being spend I wouldn't want to pay them a penny more). I am self employed and would be more than happy to show someone how to maximise their income by being SE.

Also, to anyone that says why should the government help... well because if I employ a nanny, I need to pay employer contribution tax, employer insurances, payroll fees, salary tax, nino contribution, pension contribution all after I already paid TAX out of my own salary. So, maybe, just maybe they should allow us to run it like business do (if they expect us to register as an employer), pay for all those first, then get taxed on what we get left with out of our salaries. Right now, one parent will ONLY work to pay for childcare, so is there any point in working at all? I guess only if you want to keep your career and experience.

There are a whole bunch of stuff the government can do to help... maybe follow most developed European countries do... give mothers 2 years maternity leave, fully paid, not just 4 months, since anything more is decremental and will be at almost no pay.