To think it’s actually really unfair to be charged for bank holidays at nursery?

[bouncinround]

And no, I’m not going to complain about it because I don’t want anyone to think I begrudge the staff a day off. I don’t. But I do resent paying for a service I’m not receiving.

Our nursery we paid 50% for bank holidays, which I thought was really fair. It meant staff had the day off as they should and we shared the cost of that, which seems reasonable to me.

Either they charge you 12% on top of your hourly fees to cover holidays, or they charge you for bank holidays, but otherwise you're expecting the nursery staff to work without their statutory entitlement to holidays

The nursery I chose for my DC (many years ago now) stayed open on all bank holidays. They shut for 10 days at Christmas though.

surely the way to do it is to stay open and then arrange the bank holiday “benefit” for staff another way?

Not at all. I mean, they have annual leave but that isn’t expected to be paid for by only the parents of that key worker!

Mine charges for inset days which I do find quite annoying as I am paying ~£100 for the day and receiving no childcare… but then also have to find new childcare (another £100+) or take a day off work.

Bank holidays I don’t mind as I am off anyway.

Mine doesn’t charge.
i think this is fairer, it must make it harder for nurseries that do charge to fill places on Monday too. Surely everyone would pick their days not to be Monday

DH works from home Monday and Friday. So it makes sense for my working days to be then. Frustrating on the Easter weekend though!

You can't expect a refund for holidays because they save on nappies and wipes those days.

What's next, asking for a reduction because your child didn't shit that day?!

Yes it would really annoy me because not all of the costs are staff costs so they are making money on that day by not being open.

I think if they charge for the day they should stay open for the day.

I agree OP, it would be fairer for everyone to pay a slightly increased day/hour rate to cover that cost rather than landing the BH cost on Monday parents who pay for days when no service is available.

I don't work in a nursery and can imagine the uproar if we charged our clients for a whole day of work we hadn't done so we could have bank holidays off!

I agree OP, DD Used to go on Mondays and Tuesdays so we always paid for the bank holidays.

it would be fairer to take a fee from all parents pro rata to cover the costs.

those saying they staff should be paid for bank holidays of course they should but the business are paying the staff to provide a service and the service isn’t being provided. Would you pay another service I.e. cleaner, gardener, babysitter etc if they usually worked for you on a bank holiday or would they just switch days?

Nurseries are extremely profitable for the owners. My child’s nursery was making net profits of 400k a year.

My daughters nursery gave us a "free" week at Christmas but I never treated it as a free week just that they took their annual costs and divided them by 51 weeks instead of 52.
Nurseries don't work out the costs of running each day they work out their annual costs and what daily fee allows them to keep their doors open every day.
My daughter was in Mon Tues Thu and Fri and never gave bank holidays or the daily charges much thought and treated it as the bill as the monthly cost for keeping the nursery open.

Read my post correctly before you bother commenting.

You clearly chose to ignore part of my last 2 sentences.

You don’t begrudge it but you do begrudge it?

Okay. Got it.

would you rather the nursery didn't charge for the 8 bank holidays. - but instead included the 8 bank holidays in the monthly payment, thus increasing the daily rate?

They either already charge parents as much as can reasonably be afforded or they’re struggling with funding enough because of the pitiful amount the government gives them to provide high quality early years education for ‘free’.

Our nursery never charged bank holidays.

I mean, I’m sure the overall daily rate was worked out to cover the bank holidays but on the monthly invoice a day was removed when there was a bank holiday and stated as such.

OP, some people are being wilfully uncomprehending on this, but your basic point is fair.

If Child A usually goes in on Tues, Weds, & Thursday, and Child B usually attends on Monday, Friday and some-other-day. Child B will be affected by a lot more bank holiday closures than child A, but a lot of nurseries will charge their parents the same amount, each month even though they receive a lower level of service.

It's not really fair, and it could be made a lot fairer if they calculated their day-rate based on their total costs base (including holiday pay for staff) plus a fair profit margin, and divided by how many days they are open, not by how many weekdays there are in a year.

My nursery doesn’t charge for bank holidays. They presumably just equalise the cost through their overall charges. This makes it much fairer and removes the disincentive from having your child in on a Monday.

I’m not sure about the argument re staff getting paid etc. No other service business that I can think of charges clients for periods that they’re not open / can’t provide a service.

This thread is literally going around in circles

It’s not fair because people who don’t use nursery on a Monday don’t lose a day. If you work bank holidays you may also have to pay for alternative child care. I presume all the people saying it’s fair are nursery owners 🤣 The costs should be spread.

But then at least it's spread across everyone using the nursery, not just those using it on a Monday.

No, you haven’t got it.

No one is begrudging the staff a paid day off. I am begrudging paying for it when parents who attend different days don’t.