Nursery fee increase to £100 a day

[WildWhippet]

£100 a day.

The nursery is fantastic but that’s almost £26,000 after tax. £2,125 a month.

How on earth do people afford a second child in the South East?

£100 a day! That’s shocking! I thought my nursery fees were bad a few years back at £35 a day (north east)!

Five year gap between my two

£63.50 a day in Leeds. Up from £54 four years ago. Perhaps you could become a childminder and charge slightly less than the local nurseries!!

I thought £70’a day was a lot !
im currently preggers with number 2. Will be a 20 month gap .

I’ll be off for one year on maternity until June 2024 then we will be paying for 2 at nursery until September 2024 when all children will apparently get 15 free hours funding . We will need to top up the additional 25 hours per child ! Ahhhhhhh.

Then in the January at 3 years and 3 months oldest will get 30 hours free ! So from that point it will be topping up 10 hours for oldest and 25 hours for youngest .

or I could just not return to work as my wage is cancelled out by the nursery fees . I’d Not be exhausted.

Why oh why didn’t they bring in 30 free hours for all children aged 9 months and over from September 2023!!! Why wait 2 years !!!!!!!

I'm in this position now. I actually feel really trapped. I would love to go back to work but it would end up costing me money once I factor in childcare and the commute. I would be working 40 hours a week and take home nothing. I'm waiting until my youngest turns 3.

It's tough.

Mine is very similar, £106 a day which is £2,302 a month. I can't wait until he's 2 and it decreases a bit.

I feel your pain. Ours is £103 per day (SW London), and from next month we will have two in nursery full time (10 month old and 3 year old), so a total of £4k per month. We don't qualify for the 30 free hours, but equally we aren't so well off that we don't feel the effect of that missing 4k each month! But there's no way I'm giving up my career, so... here we are.

We actually thought a two year gap with fists not in nursery 2-3 was a good move that saved a year of childcare. Still ended up in debt but paid it down quite quickly after.

Family help or like me work evenings/weekends. That's how a lot of the families I know do it unfortunately

This is why we are the only people at our London nursery with 2 kids there. And we can only just about swing it by using savings/credit and cutting spending for the 6 months they will both be there. And this is despite paying significantly less per day than the OP (£62 discounted from £76 for full time). We would have had a larger age gap but I'm in my 40s.

Is that before childcare tax top up from the government? So really it’s £80 per day?

At £100 a day that would only be 100 days at £80 or 20 weeks at full time. There will be a lot of days not covered by tax-free childcare.

If only they had increased the threshold in the budget to help with the increased fees due to inflation…

In my area families sometimes choose smaller age difference (1,5-2 years), and take 3 years out of work, until the older is 3 and has a funded place.

Where in NI are you? Ours has went up to £50 south Down. £38 is what it started as 6 years ago

I'm amazed at people paying less than £50/day.
When I looked at nurseries 16 years ago they were about £60/day.

@belladonna22 - if you don’t qualify then at least one of you is earning over £100K/year or at least one of you isn’t working 16 hours/week or more. That’s not struggling.

Ours is £120 per day (London) 🫠

Wow that's expensive! We used to live in Surrey and now Berkshire and I thought it was expensive, but nothing comparable. We used to pay around £1600 when he started in the baby room 3 years ago and now he's a preschooler we pay £1200 with the 15 hours applied all year round.

“Why oh why didn’t they bring in 30 free hours for all children aged 9 months and over from September 2023!!! Why wait 2 years !!!!!!!”

Cynically, because the Tories won’t be in power when the promise comes a-calling, so who knows if it will actually happen.

Wow this is crazy! I'm just outside of Manchester & nurseries charge £70 per day which I was shocked out when I found out. I'm a childminder & charge £45 per day which is about average for here. I really feel for parents. I've not put my prices up since 2020 and am trying not to but nurseries have massive overheads.

Because they are offering roughly £4.80 for these 'free' hours, settings are going to shut if they don't fund it properly!

We did exactly the same 10 years ago, and we don't live in South East of England. We couldn't afford two children in nursery, so there are 4.5 years between our kids. Although, to be honest, we couldn't have afforded to pay so much for nursery for ONE CHILD as in those days ( when I had only one), my monthly salary was less than £2k. My husband's salary was less than that too, one of us would have had to stop working and we couldn't have afforded that either!

I understand this as a qts in a nursery ! But I don’t believe this couldn’t be funded quicker !!!!

I don’t think there would be the places, if suddenly it was a lot more affordable to send lots of 9m old DCs to childcare.

One parent gives up work for a few years