To think new parents are complaining more these days about nursery costs

[NameChangedOct24]

….even though they get the funding much earlier?

previously it was 15 or 30 hours from 3 years old. Parents would be grateful of the discount, with sometimes confusion about why the hours were not ‘free’ in private nurseries, top up fees and term time only stretched etc. I remember my monthly fee dropping from £1900 to £1400 from the 30hr funding and being happy with the saving.

recently though, working parents get some funding much earlier, which is great but they think it’s shocking that they still have to pay for childcare, on here and in real life. Eg colleague complains about it being only 15 hours, can’t afford to put them in 3+ days a week so need to wfh with toddler at feet. Aibu my colleagues don’t appreciate the better deal they have compared to a few years ago!?

Not everyone gets the funding, it doesn't exist in NI. And from what I understand, the funded hours are funded at such a low level that the saving for parents is next to nothing.

Meanwhile increased energy and wage costs mean fees have gone through the roof (I think we had two increases over 10% in less than a year), and parents' other expenses have gone up too so there's less spare cash to pay the increases.

We were better off three years ago with two in nursery FT than earlier this year with one in nursery FT and the other in out of school club three days a week.

We don't get the funded hours but I get the impression that even for those that do they're a tiny part of the picture.

A friend of mine has a 5 year old and 18 month old. Both went to nursery two days a week aged 1.

5 year old had no funding, 18 month old gets 15 hours.

She's worse off now. Yes the funding starts earlier, but look at everything else compared to a few years ago. Mortgage increases, cost of food shopping, the actual cost of nursery itself.

Numerous factors:

• not everyone eligible for free hours - currently only 15 hours from age 2.
• nurseries not funded properly so the hours aren’t really 15 hours worth - plus top up fees
• not all nurseries offering free hours as can’t afford
• the actual cost of a place has increased dramatically. 15-20% increase locally here across nurseries in 2 years
• broader cost of living crisis - people’s mortgages may also have gone up significantly since 2022 so there’s less ‘spare’ for childcare

‘15 free hours’ on a £1900 monthly fee (so £1650 if reflecting your own experience) still leaves your average worker with very little left once childcare is paid for.

Lots of things are crap now that are better than years ago but still not good enough. Like women's health care, maternity care, equal pay, equal rights, maternity pay, paternity leave etc. it's not a race to the bottom and people don't have to be grateful for scraps in a society that could and should do better.

Other European countries have much better child care provision and the government needs to improve what is offered her if they really want mothers back in work.

In a country with an ageing population and a declining birth rate where people literally can't afford multiple children the government needs to pull their finger out with child care costs.

It’s not a great time to be a parent of young children TBH.

They should complain. Childcare needs to be accessible to everyone. Women shouldn’t have to give up their careers to have a child.

It's a shit show, I feel really sorry for them.Ours only left nursery a few years ago but not sure how I would have coped now.

Years ago there was no funding. Not many parents complained because most children didn't go to nursery because mums stayed at home..

YABmassivelyU. And VERY ignorant.

7 years ago ou nursery fees were £1350 for 4 days per week without funding.

Now they are £1975 for 4 days per week WITH funding.

Add to that huge rent and mortgage increases and cost of living increase and wages that have not gone up to meet this.

Yeah it’s fucking shit compared to before.

Also - the cost of funding the annual increases can be massive, prices were already increasing above inflation but in the last couple of years that’s been supercharged (and will be bad in 2025 due to rising cost of minimum wage and NI).

Say your fees go up by 10% in 2025. That might be £200 per month.

You have a student loan, so after tax etc you’re looking at need to earn basically twice that sum to pay the increased fees.

So suddenly you need to earn an extra £4,800 exclusively to pay the new nursery fee.

And it happens every year.

And yes I will shout and stamp my feet about childcare because the whole system is broken. It doesn't work for parents, with costs keeping many women out of work. Actually free childcare would benefit the economy, so it's worth doing.

And it's broken for the staff too who do a difficult and skillful job for the sum total of fuck all pay.

@IHopeYouStepOnALegPiece only three years ago I remember it being discussed locally that a nursery had hit the dizzy heights of £2k a month fees.

As of Jan 2025 every nursery will be charging over £2k a month locally, with that trailblazer now charging £2,500 next year (!).

I think it's more expensive than before even with the funding. Our nursery has doubled the fees for unfunded hours.

Plus it's the way it was sold as free hours - in practice there are often no completely free hours (unless at a preschool with school hours, or a handful of private nurseries) even if you send your child for 15 hours a week and claim the free hours it will still cost you several hundred a month.

YABU.
wales doesn’t do funding until the term after they are 3.
plus my disposable income has massively shrunk since 2018 with inflation and company greed (record breaking profits everywhere but can’t possibly afford price cuts). So as a proportion of earning it’s pretty tough now.

Due to cost of living, our household is much more stretched now, with nursery funding applied, than we were without it a year or two ago. Nursery fees have also gone up and the nursery states a set number of hours/days a child needs to attend to make it viable for them to apply the funding, so there's very much no such thing as "15/30 "free" hours".

Plus it's the way it was sold as free hours - in practice there are often no completely free hours (unless at a preschool with school hours, or a handful of private nurseries) even if you send your child for 15 hours a week and claim the free hours it will still cost you several hundred a month

this is not a new thing, it was always this way.
the colleague in my example - her toddler goes to nursery 2 days per week with 15hr funding and it costs her £380 per month. She says she cannot justify more so has to wfh with him.

i used to spend 1900 monthly per child for full time nursery (which included a full time discount - 4 days was also almost £1900)

2 days in 2020 at the nursery my ds went to was £940…so todays funding has reduced costs.

My gripe is it isn't applied universally across the UK

If my memory serves me correctly the Tories made a huge thing of 30 free hours for 3 year olds years ago, to get re-elected I think. Problem is it doesn't actually work in practice so parents found that their bills weren't reducing as much as they thought. Some families made different financial decisions than they would have otherwise - for example having another child, taking on more hours at work, moving house, etc etc only to discover their nursery bills were much higher than anticipated. Ever since the funding now applies to younger children it's the same thing again but now affects even more families.

Working parents have been sold a lie, basically.

So what? Where are parents supposed to find these huge sums of money in a cost of living crisis?

Compare it to the average wage - how do you find so much money if you also have to pay rent/mortgage and bills?

I don't want children, so I have no idea how it uses to work 10 years ago, or now. I know what friends and family with children say about it and what I read in the paper about it.

I think the free hours are shit. They don't work for parents or the providers.

I think it should be entirely free for parents, entirely paid for by the government and the staff paid fairly and the setting funded properly like schools are (should be).

Our nursery fees have gone up 24% in 2 years and are now just under £2400 a month for five days a week for an under 2 year old. The free hours takes this down to £2000. Not even covering the increase in the last two years.

They have also halved the sibling discount from 10% to 5%.

In this context the free hours are like a sticking plaster that has been sitting in the bath for an hour: pretty much useless.

In fact, for those who aren't entitled to the free hours they are worse than that because they have just led to an even bigger increase in the base fees.

I agree, it’s hard to hear other parents moaning about to when we’ve been paying the higher amounts for years when the funding started at 3 years. But the cost of living has gone up so much over the last couple of years and mortgage and rents both shooting up so people often have less disposable income now in comparison to a few years ago. I now have another baby in nursery getting the 15 funded hours form 9 months and it’s still expensive and our living costs are higher so which has wiped out the savings from the reduced nursery fees. Plus nursery fees have gone up a lot over the last couple of years because of cost of living rises and minimum wage rises. So I can see it from both sides. Whichever way you look at it childcare is still expensive.

Open to correction on this from posters in England, but my understanding is that the funding was never sufficient. However in the past it was only given to a small portion of DC and so the younger ones effectively subsidised the older ones and parents did see an appreciable saving.

Now so many get the funding that doesn't work any more so it's not making much difference to bills.

Just because it’s less shit than it was a few years ago doesn’t mean it’s not still shit.