Nursery fee increase

[Leopardspota]

Our nursery fees will increase by 6.3% (well above my pay rise!!) in January. They are now £126.50 per day, outer London.

AIBU to think this is huge? It was £113 per day when we started in 2023.

But it’s just spreading the cost. We’d still be paying the same amount just spread over more years.

I'd be looking for an alternative.

I used au pairs.

I also put jobs up in local language schools for people that needed accommodtion in return for accommodation and a small wage and that worked fab.

Yes Not every one can afford to pay for 2 at one time though. If I had my kids close in age the nursery fees would've been more than income for two What was I supposed to live on then? As I previously stated no subsidy then

If you don't qualify for a decent amount of free hours then you have to treat it the same

Your husband is paying for his children’s childcare NOT substituting you!!! The children are just as much his responsibility to look after as yours - what if you had died?🤷‍♀️ he would have 100% responsibility and still would have to be paying for childcare or have to stay at home and live off benefits.
women shouldn’t have to think this way! You’ve damaged your body and put your life at risk more than once to have the children and also put your life and career on hold. Damaged your career prospects long term and your husband has had none of that

Sorry I disagree. We have family
money. I contribute £2500 ish and he contribute about £10k per month. We only need childcare because we both work, but
my work doesn’t cover half of the childcare, therefore his contribution subsidises my working. Obviously it’s more complicated than that and doesn’t consider my pension or my career trajectory. Having said that I’m not planning on moving higher up, so it’s not like I’d be limited by taking time off. He will soon be subsidising me retraining too, neither of us consider it ‘subsidising’ in a negative way, because it is what works for our family, but that is the word that best explains the financial side.

I definitely think it’s important to consider long term career, pension etc.
I wouldn’t phrase is as “subsidising” but if you have combined finances, then it doesn’t matter who is paying what bills, if the family as a whole is worse off because of someone working then that has to be considered as well. If nursery costs, £900 a month more than one person is earning (which I think is what OP is saying), then the £900 has to come from somewhere. And it’s not always easy to say “prioritise long term career prospects and pension” if you can’t afford the £900 right now.

One of a nursery's main costs will be staff. The Government has put up NMW by a large amount. Again.
In addition there is the ongoing increase in employer's National Insurance (the "tax on jobs").
As PP said, they also don't get paid enough for funded hours so they have to find a way to recover that cost somewhere.

TLDR: it's partially due to the current Government's policy

"No one made you ...." fgs -they aren't asking for you to pay for them, they are, quite justifiably, moaning about costs!

Agree with you!

I'm a teacher and had twins (now 10!). When I went back to work, I had to return two days a week because my 40% salary wasn't much over the tax bracket, so after petrol and childcare for twins, I earned about £20 a week.

If I worked a third day, I would pay 20% tax on the full amount and the childcare for the day plus petrol would have been far more than I'd earn for the third day after tax, so I would have been working for about MINUS £30 a week!

Have you considered asking your school to do 2 days a week so the numbers balance? I teach a subject where the struggle for teachers so my school were happy to agree! I liked the school so didn't want to give up my job.

Holy moly. My kids are teens now but I’m pretty sure we used to pay about £40 per day in west London (about 15 years ago).

Midlands and our rise was 5% this year. Plus we now have to pay for breakfast club hour as extra whereas it was included before. Everything has gone up so much.

Fees have pretty much doubled when I look back and compare what I paid for DS 7 years ago and DD now. Luckily I only every had one in nursery at a time.

Have you paid to advertise?

It was a shade under £60 per day when my daughter was a baby. Also outer London/Kent borders and she's only 13! My goodness that's a lot!

Wow, that's huge. I remember paying £30 a day for ds1. Although that was a long time ago when nursery staff were paid £3.70 an hour.

Your nursery fees are high so guessing you’re in a city or SE. Our most expensive private full day fee is £76 for under 2’s.

Price rises in the industry generally are being fuelled by min wage increases, increases in employer NI payments, VAT (private nurseries aren’t except) and general underfunding of the funded hours and now sick pay is starting from the first day so employers are paying the person sick plus the person to cover.

Out of interest I just checked the website of our local nursery and the fees are £127 per day. £2,476 monthly for a full time place. I am pretty shocked. I think we are lucky we’re past that age… our wages have definitely not kept up with inflation.

Countries that have low cost or subsidised childcare generally have much higher taxes than we do.

My nursery have increased their rates by £450 a month - in three years.

It’s relentless. No doubt it will b another £100 a month in January, possibly more given wage increases etc.

They may have higher taxes but probably higher incomes also.

It's a perfect storm in the UK: high tax but not enough to cover minimum wage and cost increases; stagnant growth and real wage cuts for those not on the minimum. And crappy services so you don't feel any value for money.

https://www.the-londoner.co.uk/private-equity-nurseries/

Many have been taken over by private equity. I know that that's the case for a number of nurseries in my area. I'm Scotland, my local prices whilst high, aren't as eye watering as some of yours!