To think nursery shouldn’t be charging me for bank holidays?

[Givemegoldensun]

Can I ask AIBU? Nursery costs just over £90 a day for an 8 month old, and they expect us to pay for bank holidays when they are not open. To me this seems unreasonable. We are talking about paying £185 for no service (Good Friday/Easter Monday). It this normal practice? I don’t want to be an asshole but we are financially stretched and I don’t think this is fair.

This is what DS's did, and this is how I'd do it. Parents I spoke to quite liked getting an invoice that was 2 sessions lower for Good Fri/Easter Mon even though intellectually we knew it was built into the hourly rate.

Everyone gets paid for BH, why shouldn't they?

I guess it's because the bank holiday is essentially part of the nursery workers holiday entitlement, and as people are rightly saying they need to be paid for their holidays just like all other employees. The difference is that for most employees this cost is spread by in the income the business receives across a year from all its clients. In the case of nurseries, this portion of the holiday entitlement is effectively ONLY paid for by the Monday clients. Which seems unfair.

Ive no skin in the game but it seems a poor way of doing things to me.

Most if not all nurseries charge. Ours pretend they don't but they do. No point kicking off with the nursery, if you object that much you might be better with a childminder. At the same time though there's no guarantee they won't charge either.
During a time when demand is outstripping supply for places there's no point getting annoyed about it. Wait until you find out you'll be charged for the xmas shutdown as well!

If you're getting paid for the BH it shouldn't make a difference in terms of your finances as your wage will be the same, it's just that your nursery bill is also the same.

Well I don't think they're being unreasonable, but you don't want to hear that, so 🤷‍♀️

Have always thought that this is not a very fair position for shift workers (eg Drs; police; retail workers; IT infrastructure workers) who will be working bank holidays and have to find additional childcare while paying for their regular childcare which is shut.

Of course nurseries have costs. But they choose to set out these costs on a per day basis.

Approaches that average the costs over a year feels fairer

This! Same with vets too. It’s a business not a charity.

Does she personally employ the staff?

They should charge more pd to enable the staff to be paid on bh. like, you know, most businesses do.

Me. I'm a Childminder and don't charge for bank holidays as I'm closed.

You do though, or you should. You work out all your costs for the year and you work out what you have to charge to cover those costs plus make some money. Same as the nursery. Bank holidays cost nurseries money so they have to cover those costs by charging their customers. They can do this by spreading them out or just charging for the day. Spreading the cost out is still charging for them.

This!! I used to work in a nursery and the overheads were ridiculous!

Compress your hours then have Mondays off

Annoyingly, a lot of Local Authority training( which childcare providers are told to use) takes place during the day now. I'm a childminder and no longer attend daytime training because of this- I'd lose too much money!

I'm a Childminder too and I don't charge for bank Holidays as I'm closed too. Not prepared to work it, so I don't charge. I used to charge then I once had a mum and 3 children turn up on my doorstep one bank holiday for childcare. Reminded her that I didn't work on bank Holidays and she said " But you charge me for it?" She was a nurse so didn't get Bank Hols off. After that,I stopped charging.

I don't know how common it is, but there's also the issue of Monday parents who work bank holidays who have to then pay - for a second time - to have their children looked after on a bank holiday. E.g. retail, service, certain NHS workers etc

I appreciate nurseries are underfunded and the gov has screwed them over, but I don't think the status quo of charging when closed is fair.

Where do you get that from. Nurseries have been saying and campaign all along for a fair rate for funding the government even ignored its own advisors 10 years ago who said the rate needed to be higher it refuses to even change it to subsidised rather than free and told nurseries to inflate rates to younger children and claw back through additional charges including bank holidays, language classes, dance classes and to hold down staff pay.
The only option nurseries had was to refuse to take funding then you would have all changed to one who did.
Parents in general believed the government saying yippee we get free childcare they didn't stand against the policy so it's parents who have not taught for the nurseries who have been compliant with the government.
How many people here have signed petitions or joined champagnes .....or even really knew about the problem before the BBC finally started saying there was a problem last year.

I'm audited for funding we are restricted on what we can charge as additional fees for funded hours to stuff like food and outings so 3 children on 30 hours a week leave 11 chargeable hours each child's funding is already £1.50 short so that's a loss of £135 a week £5130 a year just to cover that I would have to increase my paid hourly rate by £4.10 and everyone on here would be up in arms saying how come I'm paying so much more, we're struggling free childcare was supposed to help us. If a parent is earning minimum wage how can we charge all of that for their unfunded hours all that will happen is parents only use funded hours and childcare closes......which has already started to happen...
Look at childcare closure rates.

Yep evening training went with COVID.

If someone uses the nursery say T/W/Th. Do they get charged for bank holidays? Or is it just people who would have been in on M & F?

It would seem to me that it would be split so everyone pays a percentage relative to how many days they use the service.

Totally agree with the above. Statements about "30 free hours" are given for political reasons. After all, full-time work is 37 hours, so it looks like the government should be covering the lion's share of the childcare for working parents, right? In reality, the discount on getting 30 hours in the local nursery is something from 2200 to 1800. I mean, it is still welcome, but it is SOOOO far from the claims being made.

In reality, the discount on getting 30 hours in the local nursery is something from 2200 to 1800. I mean, it is still welcome, but it is SOOOO far from the claims being made.

Absolutely. And it’s not even the case that people can think, ‘oh, even if it doesn’t work out as 30 free hours, at least my bill will go down!’ chances are it might not or your childcare provider stop taking ‘funded’ hours or folds completely.