Or are these nursery top-up fees too high?

[Greenrailings]

Just trying to get some perspective here - what are other people paying to supplement their child's funded nursery hours?

Our 3 year old is eligible for 30 hours funding. He attends all year round, so his funding is for 21 hours per week.

Our nursery charges £3.70 "additional service charge" per funded hour, so for 2 x ten hour days, we're charged £74/week. This seems like a lot to me?! It basically means that the funded hours give a 50% discount on their daily rate.

Nursery provides all food and snacks, but he'd need nappies and wipes if not potty trained. Suncream is charged extra in the summer months.

Background: both of our children attended this nursery and they've thrived there. Eldest is now at school. Last January, we moved our 3yo to the preschool attached to our daughter's school. There was no funding top-up, but we were really unhappy with it (unstructured, all ages in together, lots of screen time) so we moved him back to the first nursery in October.

I don't want to move him again but I'm wondering if these charges are typical? It seems mad that we're still paying £££ a month for just two days a week. I understand that the government funding doesn't cover the full costs incurred by childcare providers, but to the tune of £37 a day?!

Will they actually let you use 10 hours funding a day? Ours doesn’t charge top up per hour, but we can only use 7.5 hours funding a day and the remaining hours are full rate, plus charges for lunch, incidentals, activities.

It's easily that underfunded in some parts of the country, hence the early years world is pissed off. Blame the government not settings.

However the government are fed up with hearing about parents complaining that settings are still charging tops ups... they want to be the heroes and thought of as fully funding the 'free hours'. To solve this, they aren't increasing the funding amounts, no no, they are putting restrictions on what nurseries can charge. The new guidance was announced Friday so you may see a new policy soon.

Are they amazing? 👏 Nurseries and childminders are so happy to be dumped on again.

It would be helpful to know what they charge for the other two days when you are paying. Also, they are allowed to charge for food etc, but you are paying close to £40/day for that, which is clearly way out. My kids nursery doesn't do top up. My DD is term time only three days a week,and it's free (for up to 10 hours, inc food, but not nappies). My younger child gets 15 hours and I have to pay £376/month for same. That's in South London

I think this is pretty standard. Similar to what was advertised at my child’s nursery once funding kicked in. We would have been using 30 hours a week and it would have cost us about £10 a day in top up. But we still had to provide nappies, wipes, suncream etc.
We have since moved to a preschool which is a registered charity. It’s much more affordable but open less hours and we provide most things. We send lunchbox, nappies, wipes, creams etc. Preschool provide snack and consumables at £1 a day. So an additional £5 a week if in full time. If non funded it’s £7 per hour plus the additional £1 a day consumable.

That seems high. My DD is 4 and gets 30 hours funded which equates to 2 days per week. She is in nursery for 3 days p/w all year round. We also pay £6 a day for food and snacks (this covers nappies/wipes if needed) and then we pay for the extra day at full rate (£70).

See if you can find the funding amount for your council... its likely a lit less than the normal per hour rate.

The whole system would be so much easier if it was just a physical pot of money you could access to pay for childcare

This is similar to how our DDs nursery was. You could only used a maximum of 6 hours funded a day.

The remaining hours were £26 for a short day (9-4) or £40 for a long day (8.30-6). From Sept last year, when the funding extended, they stopped you from being able to use just the 6 hours in a day, so you now have to pay either the £26 or the £40 a day.

Hi, We've recently decided to put our 2 year old into a forest nursery for 2 days a week and the hours are 9-3 only. We are entitled to the 30 hours funded but have since learned that we are required to pay £20 a day for the additional hour as apparently they are only able to offer 5 hours per day funded which we weren't aware of initially.

They said that the funded hours don't cover nursery costs and that the additional hour is to cover the 1:4 ratio of adults for all age phases and the specialist training of their team and enhanced educational programme they deliver which honestly seems a bit vague to me. The non funded cost would be £45 a day so £20 for an hour seems high and I'm also not sure why the funding is capped at 5 hours, we would also be providing meals so there's no costs there and as it's fully outside Idve thought there would be less costs for them to maintain.

I just wanted to get opinions on this as I'm unsure where the funded money goes if it's not towards nursery costs and why is it capped at 5 hours?

You might be better off starting your own thread as this one is from Feb and most people will just see it and reply to the OP, or see it and not reply at all as it’s old

I’m in Scotland and my son had got his funded hours. 2 full days and a half day and don’t pay a penny for them.

i pay for a half day top up but thats only £16 a week.

It’s also council run(not attached to a nursery) so not sure if that makes a difference?