To find nurseries charging on bank holidays unfair?

[Revoltingpheasants]

Is it just me who finds the system at most nurseries so unfair and frustrating? DD attends on Mondays and Fridays which means that for the Easter holiday she will only go once at the start of the holiday and once at the end.

It seems so unfair as it would be different if she attended Tuesdays and Thursdays.

I agree, i'm a childminder and I dont charge for BH. I factor this, and my own unpaid annual leave, in to my prices that I charge for the days I am open and working.

It is unfair to be paying for a service you aren’t receiving but nurseries hold the cards. It’s a matter of like it or lump it.

my son’s nursery allowed me to swap a day when he did 4 days but once he moved up to 5 days it was frustrating.

I always thought this, it seems like a raw deal for people who do Mondays. It’s the main reason I put mine in mid week. There should be some kind of discounted rate as it’s the reason Mondays and Fridays are the most unpopular days.

Well the nursery I work at,we don’t get paid the bank holiday,the way the manager works out holidays out we don’t accrue enough hours to get paid them,last year out of 28 days holiday,baring in mind we have to use 8 at Christmas,I got paid for 9 of them!

Our nursery charged 50% for bank holidays, which I felt was fair.

That said, we pay our employees on bank holidays and they don’t work. That money has to come from somewhere despite lost productivity.

My cleaners come on Monday. I don't pay my cleaning company on Bank Holidays because I don't receive a service. I find it frustrating that nurseries do this.

It gives them a lower "day rate" overall but it's just a few parents that pay the extra, not everyone, which makes it unfair IMO.

My dc did Weds - Fri at nursery partly for this reason.

I never understood why the cost of bank holidays wasn’t worked out in the fees so everyone paid towards them. YANBU!

But then why should Monday parents be paying towards a day they would not have used anyway?

I get paid for bank holidays at the small business I work for because the MD factors these essential costs into the general running of the business. He doesn’t get the two or three clients who may happen to have work done on Mondays (or whichever day is a bank holiday) to cover my bank holiday pay.

Staffing is a big cost for nurseries but they are also paying rent, rates, insurance, utilities, maintenance etc. It's not like those costs don't exist just because it's a bank holiday. I also think swapping days would be tricky becuase of the staff to children ratio. If you want to avoid paying for bank holidays then you should probably swap days permanently and do a Tuesday and Wednesday for example or find a child minder who doesn't have the same type of overhead that a nursery does.

Do the staff get the day off? Some parents have to work bank holidays.

Change your working days if it annoys you so much work Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Staffing is a big cost for nurseries but they are also paying rent, rates, insurance, utilities, maintenance etc. It's not like those costs don't exist just because it's a bank holiday.

this is true for the business I work for too. And?

This 👆is a fair point

I think this is the problem here. You are taking it personally, when its really not at all. Everyone has given you the reasons this happens and you signed up and agreed to it so you either move on or change your days.

I agree!

In a different context, I have staff who work Mondays and Fridays and staff who work Tues and Weds. This doesn’t mean that Mon and Fri staff get more time off than the others as most BH fall on their working days. Everybody gets the same number of days off, it just means that Mon and Fri have a bit less flexibility over when to take some of their days off as we are closed on BH.

If you’re saying that the nursery is closed on BH, then their fee structure should apply equally for everyone and if they are closed on your chosen days they you either get charged less or offered days in lieu. This may end up being a bit more expensive for Tuesday and Weds parents, but it means everyone pays the same amount for the same number of days in nursery.

So many aspects of nursery are such a culture shock, @Revoltingpheasants
I remember feeling frustrated when I received a little extra fee for Boxing Day 2024. The nursery manager had made a mistake in the fee request and had to write to us all to charge £45 each for a day that nursery wasn't even open!
I was so cross about it at the time, but as others have said on this thread, staff still need to be paid etc.
I can also remember being livid that when they had an issue with their fire alarm system, I had to drop everything at work and rush to pick up DD as it wasn't safe for the kids to be there without a functioning fire alarm, but the following week when I had an emergency and asked for flexibility on collection, it wasn't possible.
It felt like it was all one way which is so silly really, but we're exhausted parents trying to get used to a new system and things can seem stacked against us!

Your DH is driving this problem to an extent, with his choice of WFH days. Is he away all the rest of the week, or can he change, eg to Thursday and Friday, which would still leave a block of three days. Your DD is missing quite a lot of her nursery education with your current arrangements.

Is there an option to ask ? It’s only because I asked and then they started letting others do it 😅 I even said she could do a shorter day as long as she does a few hours. This was when she was in the 2+ room and a lot more of the kids were term time so they had extra staff

nurseries make staff use holidays so they don't have wages to pay on those days, it's really unfair in my opinion!

Theyre still paying for those days. Uk. Law allows 5.6 weeks (28 days)

Almost all people classed as workers are legally entitled to 5.6 weeks’ paid holiday a year (known as statutory leave entitlement or annual leave).

This includes:

agency workers
workers with ‘irregular hours’ (where the number of hours they work in a pay period often or always changes)
‘part-year’ workers (where there are periods of at least a week in a leave year where they do not need to work and are not paid)
An employer can include bank holidays as part of statutory annual leave.

Statutory annual leave entitlement
Most workers who work a 5-day week must receive at least 28 days’ paid annual leave a year. This is the equivalent of 5.6 weeks of holiday.

Seems pretty obvious to me that nurseries should pro rata the cost of paying their staff on BHs between all the users of the service. It's grossly unfair to penalise those that use Mondays and not all other days of the week.

So you want nursery fees to go up for everyone so you don't have to pay for bank holidays. Why should other parents pay more because your child goes to nursery on Monday? Why doesn't your husband change his WFH days if it's such a problem so you can work different days?
Next thing will be posters saying they don't know why nursery staff get paid for bank holidays. I've seen that argument on here before

@Stressedoutmummyof3 i think the cost should be evenly distributed, yes.

@IdentityCris the nursery is closed for the full week over Christmas and new year.

I think it would be fairer to increase the charges on all days and then not charge for days that the nursery is closed (bank holidays, training days, Christmas closure etc). That way the cost of those days is shared by all customers.

This would mean a higher headline “daily rate” though, which people may use to decide on which nursery to use. So the nursery may be reluctant to use the model.

I agree OP, it does seem unfair and was one of the reasons that I went for Tues & Thurs as my little one's nursery days.

I think it’s swings and roundabouts really - ours doesn’t charge but is slightly more expensive than the other local one which does charge, so they recoup the costs indirectly.

That said, I don’t understand the argument about the staff still being paid etc - our business closes on bank holidays, the staff still get paid but the business doesn’t earn anything those day. That’s just part and parcel of the running costs of a business?