Do you pay your nursery's essentials and extras fee?

[Brightyellowflowers]

My DCs go to a private nursery and receive the 30 hours funding. We've just had notification that the fee they charge for extras is now "non-mandatory" (as per new government guidance). They charge £1.80 per funded hour, which doesn't sound much, but for two kids it's an extra £171 a month each... which is 4k a year!

I appreciate that government funding doesn't always cover their costs, but I can't afford to pay 4k if I don't have to. What is everyone doing? Do you pay this charge? I feel like the nursery is guilt tripping parents into paying it and just wanted to check what the norm is.

That’s a healthy directors’ salary. I bet the staff are on minimum wage too! Usually the way!

It's Bright Horizons, a huge national chain

presumably the asking but not demanding is like schools asking for contributions for trips etc. they can ask, and you don’t have to pay.
that one is easier to swallow as you can see the benefit, consequences and the fact they aren’t a business (we are parking the academy can of worms aspect there)

i would probably make the assessment on two things, what will my child miss out on if I don’t pay and if it’s a community non profit or a business.

No hate here as it should be the job of the GOVERNMENT to pay providers what childcare providers what childcare costs, not parents to top it up.
What would probably happen is that the nursery would likely restructure the consumables fee to a per day amount - nappies, food and snacks - ours is £10
per day / £5 per half day so you can more straight forward pay or not pay it but the food is really good so I don’t really have a problem. Feels crap when they out of nappies or you use cloth like we did but (like I do) if you like the nursery and don’t want to risk loosing your place through spurious means - best not to rock the boat as it’s not forever - even though it feels so unfair!

I will say I do pay the top up charges, but my nursery does discounts for sibling and full time places. Those discounts aren't applied if you don't pay the extra charges.

Yeah I believe so