To think this working parents eligibility criteria is unfair?

[takehischipsandputthemonmyplate]

Ready to put my tin hat on but...

I am a low earner (£25k) and partner is high earner but not exceptionally so (£110k in London) so we aren't eligible due to my
partner earning over £100k. However we have friends who combined bring in far more (almost at £200k together) but are individually just under the £100k threshold and so will be eligible for the free hours from 9 months in September 2025, thus savings thousands on childcare.

I appreciate it's a case of my diamond shoes are too tight but this does feel like a flaw in the system.

And most of them are women, of course. Institutional sexism.

Coupled single earner households probably are more likely to have a single male earner - with a female partner needing to be supported off those earnings. Of course they don't then have to fund childcare to the extent a single parent does as theres a SAHM.

But yeah, single parenthood is economically difficult!

Agree.

Obviously it’s a “diamond slippers” problem, as OP says. Nobody earning in that range is claiming to be hard up. Having children is a choice. I am aware of all of this!

However, it can’t make economic sense to disincentivise this group of people, who are taxed heavily and therefore making net contributions on the income above 100k, from working?

My husband earns just over 100k. We try and keep it as close to that figure as possible and make extra pension contributions to remain below the threshold, through he would like to take on more work to progress his career. He’s a hospital doctor and we all know it would probably be better if he could work more rather than less. Unfortunately, we are “worse off” with any pay rise unless he makes over about 145k.

Although we are obviously very privileged, it would not be a breeze to absorb the added 24k per year (so, 2k a month of taxed income) we would have to find to pay for childcare if he nudged a few pounds above the 100k threshold. It would make more sense for me to quit my job, which I don’t want to have to do.

I don't see why you would automatically rule that out as absurd. Why not both work 4 days rather than 1 work 5 and 1 work 2 or 3 if financially that works out for them and they both want to spend time with the kids.

Obviously there will be an imbalance in daily rate of a consultant vs a nurse but that will reduce dramatically factoring in the 30 hours and personal allowance taper.

No-one has to do it. But they could consider it.

Absolutely. My point was that a comment about the salary needs to be looked at in context. Many people on high wages in London either have roles that are very hard to find elsewhere, or have roles that pay a lot less elsewhere. So living somewhere cheaper, and getting a different job wouldn't necessarily mean they would be better off overall.
I grew up near a commuter town for London, which works for a lot of people, but not everyone.

My husband earns just over 100k. We try and keep it as close to that figure as possible and make extra pension contributions to remain below the threshold, through he would like to take on more work to progress his career. He’s a hospital doctor and we all know it would probably be better if he could work more rather than less. Unfortunately, we are “worse off” with any pay rise unless he makes over about 145k

@Boomeranged He's not "worse off" on a higher salary, as he'll benefit down the line from his enhanced pension

It's absurd for society, for the country - it's a stupid policy put in place to appease those millions of voters who shout "tax the rich". Yet these are the consequences

Why? Your higher earner partner can pay for the childcare too. It may still be advantageous to work for your career and for pension purposes even if household income is net the same as you not working

I agree that the system is not progressive - it has a hard, arbitrary cut off based on a single measure of wealth and income.

But no system is perfect, and none can account for 'wider picture' of living costs in capital cities, wider family financial assistance etc etc.

Agree, IF we were able to contribute everything above 100k to pension. But the extra pension contributions come out of taxed income, I think, so has a real impact on current cash flow unless he’s only marginally above the 100k. I’m in the middle of trying to work all this out, so may be miscalculating!

I don't think it is absurd - for a couple of years for a consultant to drop a day to spend that time with their child as a personal choice. Against the societal background of underfunded and understaffed NHS and compounding those issues for wider society may be a different thing. But there is also a shortage of good nursing staff. And a societal benefit of rebalancing the default caring responsibilities. I think it should be a personal choice. I don't think the government has deliberately designed it this way in order to nudge behaviour in this direction of course.

It really does. A £130k salary has a take home pay of £5835 a month, assuming minimum pension contributions and student loan repayments, which will be common for people with nursery age kids with jobs that require degrees. A full time nursery place with no funded childcare hours or tax free childcare contribution can easily be £2k per month. That is a huge dent in that take home pay. Funded childcare hours and tax free childcare can halve that nursery bill.

But even £2k a month isn't a huge dent in £130k. And that's assuming the high end of fees. £1,500 a month is even less of a dent in £130k. Even with all the additional repayments which most households still have to find each month. The same people struggling to find £2k nursery fees on £130k are probably the same people who don't think twice about spending half that on a handbag because they've 'earned it' or three times that on lavish holidays to celebrate Phoebe's GCSE results. They invariably won't be the ones buying own brand groceries and living from one pay cheque to the next.

@Curtainqueen in London £2k is really ordinary for full time childcare.

So at £130k the childcare is still over a third of your take home pay for one child. If they have two children - it’s two thirds of their income. The loss of the free hours is huge.

I think you’re pretty out of touch with the cost of living in London if you think people with kids earning £130k are spending £1k on handbags without a thought.

I know loads of people earning these kinds of amounts in London, and they might be spending £2-4k a month on nursery, and another £2-4k a month on housing.

Comfortable? Yes. Rich? No.

The median earnings in London are £47k.
A swift google reveals that aerage nursery costs in London are 33% higher than the rest of the UK, at around £1273 a month per child.
While at £47k you get some free hours, you will end up paying for some of the childcare at a ratio to income far higher than the £130k person who pays full bills.

So yes, someone on £130k, choosing a nicer house and area, choosing more expensive childcare etc is 'comfortable' not rich. But it is by choice. So no moaning please.

The privileged always find a way to never be happy with their privilege. You don’t have to struggle to afford to pay childcare, people on low income do- that’s the difference.

I don’t think they have fixed it, they’ve just upped the threshold a bit

@outdooryone Coram research in 2024 said the average cost of a full time childcare place in 2024 was £1850.

In 2025, they’ve gone up again. So it’s getting on for £2k. Many charge more (and a lot more). You can’t get full time childcare for £1,273 a month in a private nursery.

Housing costs and childcare costs are more expensive in the South East. People aren’t ’choosing more expensive nurseries’, that’s the cost of their local nursery. They are ‘choosing expensive housing’, housing is more expensive.

London isn’t full of people on average incomes having children. The birth rate has dropped dramatically. There are two camps in London now:

• People on very low incomes with housing funded by the state / housing associations
• High paid people who can afford private rents / to buy and private nursery fees.

By excluding more and more people from this benefit, while it becomes more and more generous… all that appears to be doing is radicalising the top 5% of earners (who pay the very vast majority of tax) into no longer supporting it.

I’m happy to pay high tax for good services - I’m not happy to pay high tax to then be excluded from a benefit given to 95% of other parents.

Two nursery places in London cost £4-5k a month.

£100k after tax, student loan etc is £4.9k a month.

This is backwards. If you earned more you'd have LESS debt and MORE cash available for nursery fees.
Ergo your husbands excess over £100k would be free to go into his own pension and you'd get the benefits.

@Huskytrot I wish it were that easy 😂 I work in education and have pretty much reached the limit that I can while also keeping our head above water with young children, emotionally and financially. I have every ambition to increase my earning potential but that's 10+ years away even if I put my all into my career right now. Short term, I could raise my income a little but certainly nowhere near enough to balance the childcare cost issue

As I said in another thread, a single parent friend who’s DH unexpectedly died was earning just over £100k in London and takes home £5k per month after deductions but childcare for two costs £4.4k without TFC/free hours leaving £600 to pay mortgage, bills and feed their children. No UC or other state support because of the ‘high income’. How would you make the sums work??

Reducing her salary to under £100k to get the funding was damn well the best decision for the family

I still maintain this is a feminist issue. Women like me make up 69% of lower earners and many of the female dominated industries (e.g nurses, carers, primary teachers) have limits to earning potential so it's no good just saying 'use this as motivation to earn more'. If everyone did this then who would do these jobs?

So, a cascade of events happen:

• full time nursery isn't affordable due to the high costs and unfunded hours when one partner earns over £100k
• families have to make a decision to reduce child's hours at nursery to make it affordable at all
• the lower paid half of the couple takes the hit by going part time and provide unpaid childcare as mortgage, bills, nursery unaffordable if they reduce the high paid earner's income
• the woman's career continues to be limited and earning potential slips further away

In addition, I can't emphasise enough that I appreciate we are in a privileged position and there are people in more difficult positions than us and I don't begrudge these people free childcare, of course I don't; it is that families with far more annual income than us benefit from free childcare and that is unfair. Humans from all walks of life are sensitive to injustice. Note that I am 'punching up' and complaining about the high earners to me, I'm not moaning about low income families receiving government benefits.

Seriously? Our joint income is £115k, and that is spread between two earners on similar amounts. Our take home is higher than one person on £130k by a reasonable amount each month. Our childcare fees are £1000 a month after taking into account the funded nursery hours and tax free childcare. On top of that our student loans are £400 a month, mortgage is £1400 a month (not a huge house but expensive area so we can get the higher incomes), then the usual bills, council tax, food etc. Yes an extra £1000 a month childcare costs would be a huge dent for us and not something we could easily afford, not even considering the people who have two in nursery at once. And no I have never spend or even thought about spending £1k on a handbag we don't have that kind of money available to spend on such things.

YANBU it's BS. This country runs on the unpaid labour of women. When I was a kid the nurseries were subsidised directly.