Should I be able to use the 30 hours free childcare adhoc

[Jellyrose20]

My child attends nursery two days at 20 hours.
He has needed to go an extra day for 4 weeks over November which would take me up to 30 hours.
I did email the nursery to ask if I needed to do a form to change hours and didnt hear back. I have now had an invoice charging me for the additional hours and I've been told that because its additional hours and they only claim for 20 it is paid.
Could they not just have done a change form?
Or is this how it works?
Posting in aibu as honestly it gets more traffic.
If i have to pay i have to pay, I just want to double check this is definitely correct first.
Tia.

Funding is done on a termly basis I believe. Hence the cut off deadlines so I don’t think they can just claim the extra hours adhoc but I could be wrong.

Yes, you submit your code etc periodically and the finding is done termly I think.

If he goes year round, its only about 21.5hrs... its 30 weeks termtime.

The nursery will have a cut off date for adjustments on hours each term to the local authority, as they submit predicted hours pre term, you may have missed the cut off date for adjustments.

Yes as everyone else has said, funding is termly. Your childcare provider can only put one claim in per term and they will get it paid once, in the middle of the term. So no, you can’t use them on an adhoc basis.

what you can do is claim for 30 hours and then not use all the childcare, only use what you need on an adhoc basis. Think about that for next term.