to think there is no such thing as free nursery place

[TawnyHabenero]

I thought the free hours entitlement must be accessed without conditions, but a few nurseries seem to say that you cannot claim the 15/30 or 12/24 hours alone, you must pay for hours on top of that even if you won’t use them.

e.g. Nursery policy is that you cannot use the 24 hours stretched funding on a 15 hour per week place - you have to book and pay for 30 hours per week even you are only using 15 hours. This means 6 hours per week must be paid for which is £400 per month. In general, the nursery’s minimum commitment per week is 15 hours.

Is this allowed? I thought the free entitlement had to be able to be accessed with no conditions.

The above policy means it is not possible to have a free place at this nursery (Excluding Early Years Pupil Premium Places = EYPP). Would be happy to pay consumables of course.

School nurseries are mostly free, our local school nursery offers two 15 hr classes a week (2 days for 6 hrs and 1 day for 3 hrs). I think private nurseries spread the funded hours over 38 weeks of the year (term time) so it's more like a discount, not free hours. Some nurseries might stretch it over the whole year. I'm no expert, but I think a common misconception is that we get free hours but in fact they are government funded hours so the nursery pass on the discount down to the parents. I would look into a school nursery if you don't need more than 15 hrs, my son had a great time there and it was really good preparation for school.