AIBU to hope the £100k cliff edge for funded nursery hours is removed?

[horchatatresleches]

News is that the education secretary is looking at nursery funding but it’s unclear if it’s to reduce or increase the support available at either the upper or lower thresholds. AIBU to hope that the harsh cliff edge which stops all nursery funding at £100k is removed or least replaced with something tapered so that people aren’t losing money for being marginally above the threshold?

You come across as being more than a tinge green….

What’s fundamentally wrong with everyone having the same access to services? £100k earners probably pay in the order of £25k tax. What more must they do to be accepted as anything more than a cash cow in today’s / your society?

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Are you actually aware of the tax bill for a 100k earner?

This! Two high earners under 100k qualify but a single parent earning 100k doesn’t.

If I decide to have a child then it’s my decision to pay for it. Although I do like the idea of big corporations providing daycare for their staff. I think I read somewhere that other countries do this.

Why should a household pay huge amounts of tax and not benefit from state support just like everyone else? We get to access the NHS, why can’t we access support for childcare?

Surely a system where the biggest contributors see the benefits too is a better way to keep everyone happy to contribute. Penalising high earners seems like a fantastic strategy to create a load of disgruntled voters who vote for tax cuts.

A friend of mine recently took a week of unpaid leave to ensure she stayed under the 100k threshold, as it’s so penalising to parents of young kids.

How is it good economic policy to get women opting out of work as it’s literally too expensive to work!

The issue is that if you have a child in nursery, you literally you hit £100k and end up more than £6k worse off than if you earned £99.9k as you lose the funded hours AND the tax free childcare.

In my opinion it should be tapered. I don't really care if the tapering starts at 90k and you're then out completely by £100k, whatever, the cliff edge just seems so unfair and so jarring. And makes a genuine impact on the month by month income.

If you close the pension loophole, people will just decline the pay rise. I would, it’s a no brainer if it leaves me worse off.

Normal in many areas of London / the South East now.

The fees keep going up (in part to cover the underfunded free hours).

My nursery cost £1800 for a baby in 2023 - it’s £2300 in 2026!

When you say no state support, do you think that we should have to pay to access the NHS? Should my children be entitled to a state education? Do we need to pay extra if I need the fire service? Should my family be able to access library books and groups for free? Many things are universal benefits and other posters have said better than me about how having high earners use public services as well as contributing helps everyone.

And some of them will drop their hours, which is even worse.

The £100k+ earners are subsidising the childcare costs of others. Not just with their tax, the nurseries have constantly put up their fees for the non-government funded places to cover the funded places. I know several single parents in London and the SE who earn £100k + but are struggling because of the combination of high childcare costs and high rent. They pay an exortinate amount of tax. Even giving them the equivalent of £5k back of the £30k + tax and NI they are paying, would help them tremendously and they would still be net contributors paying £25k+ tax.

It is not “an insane salary”.

The average full time UK salary per the ONS was £39,039 in April 2025 (it will be more by now). A couple each earning this would receive £2,636 each per month after tax so £5,272 net pay. With two children they’d also receive £2,252 of child benefit per year so the equivalent of another £188 per calendar month taking their total net income to £5,460.

A lone parent earning £100,000 will receive net pay of £5,713 due to the incredibly high tax rates on higher earners. They get no child benefit. Their net pay only exceeds that of the couple on average UK salaries by £253 per month: hardly riches.

Given that a nursery place for a single child can often cost more than £2000 per month they will be very significantly poorer than the couple who receive nursery funding. They will also likely need far more childcare because they do not have two parents to split work and childcare between and are likely to be working long hours to earn their high salary. They are also more likely to live in an expensive part of the country to access such a job and to have higher commuting costs.

If the lone parent has two children in childcare they will have only £1,713 per month left to pay their mortgage/ rent, Council tax, bills, food, commuting and for all of the children’s needs like clothes etc.

I don’t think 100k is insanely huge salary in today’s climate. That one wage earner could be supporting a spouse and several children. Put that it way it’s only the same as two people earning 50k each and they would get all the benefits.
It should be a sliding scale.

The max take home of a £100k salary is £5500 IF only putting in the statutory auto enrollment minimum pension.

Average full time nursery costs, without the 30 free hours are £1350 per month. So that's a net income of £4200.

Which is the same as a £86k salary with a £700 nursery bill.

Why should the two people have the same take home?

We do pay for our child. The funded hours are 30 hours per week term time only, and meals and consumable are over and above that. I assume then you think the whole scheme along with child benefit should be scrapped as people should pay for their children.

Big corporations providing daycare would be great for those in big corporations, but DH and I are both remote workers with me 40 minute drive from my workplace (which wouldn’t be big enough to sustain a nursery anyway) and my husband is a 90 minute train journey away.

Lots of these people writing such nonsense probably pay a couple of hundred pounds a month in tax and have no comprehension that almost a third of £100k salary is deducted as tax.

It’s not even close to two people earning £50k because the person earning £100k pays far, far more tax than two £50k earners. £100k provides a similar net income to a couple earning average UK salaries, per my post above.

Exactly this. And consider that is just for one place. Many working people have 2 kids at nursery at the same time for a year or 2. And parents of twins.

Also agree we need to be encouraging people to work.

That wouldn’t even cover a year of rental in my area so it’s not that insane to many people.

Absolutely, DH earns double what I earn but only takes home a third more, not double.

In fact, he earns 1.5 times more than me!

A friend with twins has had to postpone going back to work until September. Her twins were born after the Easter holidays cutoff and so aren’t eligible for funding until the autumn term and she can’t afford to go back to work until then. Tying the funded childcare hours to the school term after they become eligible is another part of the system I hope is changed. It’s nonsensical that my March baby gets funding from April, but babies born in April need to wait until September.

I agree with this. Anything that focuses on individual over household earnings penalises single mothers.

Same for child benefit, and maintenance loan calculations for uni students.

I can totally believe these numbers.

Our nursery full time without funded hours is £1700. We do live in the South West but not in London and our nursery is cheaper than neighbouring ones.

We previous paid less with childminders, but both ones we had were awful. So cheaper doesn’t mean same quality.

DH earns £200k plus. We never got to receive child benefits or free childcare because he made too much.

Well it depends what you want. Do you want people working and using nursery? It’s a very big figure and we are wealthy. It will still impact people though, especially those in london