Need to do 30 hours at nursery to get 30 hours free?

[Maternityleavelady]

DD turned 3 in March and according to government criteria we are eligible for 30 free hours from 1st April. She attends nursery 3 days per week, 8 hours per day, so 24 hours per week, but it’s all year round.
Nursery says we can’t access the 30 free hours unless we increase her hours to 30 per week. Obviously happy to have this slight cost increase in order to be able to access the big discount provided by 30 hours, but I would have thought attending 24 hours per week all year round would be roughly equivalent to attending 30 hours in term time only - so not sure why we need to up our weekly hours in order to get the 30 hours?

It’s absolutely allowed & possible to do what you are suggesting - spreading the hours out. But your nursery is trying to make money from you. Essentially the government funded hours don’t meet the costs of providing it, so nurseries, especially in areas with higher costs, are forced to wrangle all the money they can out of families.

Watch out for wrap around care..I used 22.5 free hours but had to pay £100 on wrap around care per month.....free hours is not free hours as such but core hours so 9-12 1-4. If you using up a space and nursery open from 7 you have to pay 7-9 then 12-1 them 4 to whenever nursery closes. You can get free hours but it be limited and usually just school term and usually the pre school attached to school...each nursery is different so ask around....it's vvv complicated...

Depends how the nursery applies the hours. Some give you exactly what you’re entitled to, others restrict you to 6 hours a day. Find a nursery that doesn’t dictate when the hours can be used.

They’re wrong.My daughter gets the 30 hours funding but doesn’t use her full entitlement. She only attends four days a week.

Well that's fine but it means school hi days you'll be paying for the full l30 hours

The 30 hours is just term time, but every nursery seems to apply it differently. My DD did only 30 hours a week term time, 10 hours a day for 3 days and paid nothing once she was 3 years old, but I know other nurseries do it only for core hours like a pp said so you'd need to do more days and pay for the bits in between like lunch time. Some charge for food, snacks and nappies extra but ours didn't.

My ds does 21 hours a week (3 x 7hr days) all your round by spreading his funded hours across the full year. We don't pay a penny extra!

I don’t mind paying for the extras like meals etc (the consumables charge is £154 per month) but was surprised that we needed to increase our hours to 30 to qualify at all!

We are allowed to use six hours of free childcare a day

A child must be enrolled at our nursery for a minimum of two days a week

Our nursery doesn't do that. DC2 attends two days per week all year round, so a maximum of 20 hours but he's only ever there more like 9-3 each day and we get the 30 hours which leaves us with no bill at all.

It's a nursery rule rather than something required by the government. Our nursery restricts the number of hours we can claim so we can't actually claim 30 at all anymore. Reason being the gvt rate doesn't cover costs.

We pay about £400-500 per month with the 30 free hours - my DD is in from 8-6 if needed 4 days per week full time. At our nursery you just have to attend 2 full days and the consumables charge is £150ish. I think nurseries are able to make their own rules to a certain extent as to how they facilitate the free hours. When we get her to school wrap around is about £300 a month

U do qualify what they mean is they don't allow it!

The nursery my child goes to doesn't allow term time u have to put them in all the time. This works out about 22 or 23 hrs a week. I cld actually collect her at 5pm but they don't give a reduction on that either. It's either a full day (8-6) or half day. They charge £3 which covers breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack.

I put her in 3 days as I work those 3 days. It costs me about £170 per month. A bargain compared to the £720 I used to pay! Although fees are about to increase so maybe be closer to £190-£200 soon.

I seem to remember our nursery saying they had x amount of places available for kids on 30 hours funding and x amount for 15 hours, could it be something like that? Ours was in a school though and only open 9:00 to 3:00

Can you take them up on the increased hours but then just let them know she'll be picked up early? If they're trying to maximise their income they can't force your child to stay if you want them to go

Nope what a load of rubbish.

My kid does 3 days and doesn’t need to up their hours. We spread the 30 hours over the year so it equals 21ish hours a week.

I would ask for their i policy and maths on how this is worked out

We used the 30 hours at a private nursery in 2020-2021. It's a year-round nursery (ie children can attend in school holidays) although they do also have term time only children who do 9-3. So the nursery gives parents the option to use the hours during term time only or to spread them throughout the year, which is what we did. It works out at 22.5 hours a week.
Check the Ts&Cs and ask your nursery for more information about how it's calculated, if it's possible to spread the hours throughout the year, and if not, why not.

From a nursery perspective if they're open for, for example, 7am-6pm but a parent chooses to drop off at 8.30 and collect at 4.30, they unlikely to find an additional child from 7-8.30 and 4.30-6pm, but still have the full cost of staffing the day for that child.
Most nurseries aren't open 8 hours a day from a funding perspective they have to fund 30 hours of costs a week to keep that place for your DC, but can only claim 24 if you only want to have 8 hours a day. The funding doesn't come close to covering the cost, so the nursery have decided how they're offering funded hours.

Different places will choose how they are willing to offer the funded hours.
Some will say they'll offer funded hours 9-3.30 term time only and parents pay for wrap-around care either side. Some say the 30 hours covers 3 days because they're open for 10 hours a day. Some allow parents to spread it out across the year so they have consistent bills rather than high ones in months with the holidays.

The .gov website states 30hours x 38 weeks per year (term time).
A nursery can choose to apply the funding equally across all 52 weeks or as per the government website across the 38 weeks per year. It’s entirely at the nurseries discretion.

Thats not right. Mine was allowed to go 2x11 hour days all year round. Ended up doing 3 days and I pay £250 a month for the extra day he goes.

Why? Arenypu going to rewrite their policy or challenge their maths?

They have worked out what works for their business, you take it or leave it.

I would ask them for their policy on applying the free hours (as in an email or paper copy) so you can look it Iver and see how it fits your scenario.

Sorry it's 21.9 hours a week
(the funding is 30h x 38 weeks... I had counted 39 weeks)

"Some say the 30 hours covers 3 days because they're open for 10 hours a day."

Our nursery is open 10.5 hours a day (8-6.30) but they said that the government funding only covers a maximum of 10 hours a day, so they charge parents for the extra 30 minutes even though we never used the full 10.5 hours and I expect it would be vanishingly rare for anyone to do so. I did query it and the nursery agreed to waive the charge on condition that we always collected our child before 6pm (which we did). I realise not all nurseries would be able to do that, since they do still have to staff it for the opening hours - but they can also plan shifts based on the number of children they have booked in.

The nursery also charged us for meals which was fair enough and which we obviously paid.

Yes they said we can pick her up anytime between 4 and 6pm (she used to do 8-4, now we are effectively paying for 8-6) so we may settle on a compromise of 5pm so she can have her tea there. Will be helpful on busy work days to have the option of longer anyway.