To not understand why childcare is so expensive in Surrey

[Reallytired]

My SIL lives in Surrey and apparently it costs £65 a day to put a four year old with a childminder. (This includes the governant grant.)

Yet I am paying £40 a to have a baby in nursery (no nursery vouchers). I live about 40 miles from my SIL.

Why the difference? Or should my SIL look for alternative childcare? It just seems to be truely outrageous as the childminder has no formal childcare qualifications.

£40 a day sounds fairly cheap tbh rather than the other way around

Normally if she can claim the grant the childminder will have a level 3

Where we lived it was £65 + in sw london and you don't want to ask what a nursery was......

its Surrey hun

hmm that does seem steep.
i am in west sussex, just over the border from surrey and a private nursery here is around £40 a day too, without vouchers

Yes, that does seem pricey. Here in a reasonably affluent suburb of London childminders charge £5-£5.50 per hour. Is her child there for very long hours?

east surrey and my children's nursery is £55 per day, childminders are £6-£7 per hour and nannies charge £10 per hour which I think is crazy as they are the least qualified.

It's not terribly difficult to work out, Surrey is the most expensive county to live in, in the UK.

Rent is higher, staff costs are higher and therefore cost is higher, same for London and other affluent areas.

I'm not Surrey but not that far off, i emailed a nursery about fees because they were conspicously msiing from website, they replied including this:

Under 2

Morning Session £35.50
Afternoon Session £35.25
Full Day £66.00

Over 2

Morning Session £33.25
Afternoon Session £33.00
Full Day £63.75

Crikey! And I was complaining about the costs here.

Sorry, I meant to finish my post by saying that as nursery costs are higher due to the things I mentioned above, childminders tend to charge similarly in my experience because they can.

a tangent but i am interested in this:

east surrey and my children's nursery is £55 per day, childminders are £6-£7 per hour and nannies charge £10 per hour which I think is crazy as they are the least qualified.

for me the qualifications aren't the key thing. to me a nursery is cheapest because it's a large group setting with little one-2-one care.

i would pay much more for a nanny than a nursery, even if she was totally unqualified. because she'd be looking after only my children, in their own home

what I want from childcare is something as close as possible as I can give them myself... see what i mean?

sorry, slight hijack now over!! lol

I'm surry but I'm from Surrey! (Old joke, possibly only from my old group of friends) I'm not BTW, I'm actually from Essex. But here in sunny South Glos I pay £30 a day for an outstanding childminder - she's always been outstanding in my book but was OFSTEDed recently and he agreed. £65 a day would make it impossible for me to work, but I fortunately I'm not in Surrey.

Paying £10 an hour for a nanny does seem reasonable. But a childminder can look after up to 6 kids. That is £36 an hour for someone who doesn't necessarily have any qualifications in childcare.

I wonder why surrey should be so much more expensive than any of the other home counties. Whats so wonderful about living in Surrey?

Surrey childcare is expensive because Surrey housing costs are expensive so you need to earn a lot to live here. Lots of poverty but an awful lot of very very rich city workers too.

Average 3 bed semi costs over £250k, 3 bed detached around £300k

it's cheaper than london but still accessible?

i think you'll find it the same in any place that's close enough to commute to london tbh

Pre-school is about £14 for 3 hours.

Nope, London is still easily accessible from where I live. House prices are fairly high where I live, but childcare is no where near as expensive.

£64 per day for me (Surrey).

Our childminder charges £70 a day (London).

However we needed something unusual - someone who could be very flexible and handle lots of very short-notice requests for childcare (DP works freelance and often gets only 24 hours notice of work).

Plus (as well as being lovely) she got an outstanding rating from Ofsted.

It is these two things that we are paying a premium for. I would agree that paying £60 for an childminder with no formal qualifications is - on the face of it - not great.

But perhaps she is simply the right person for the job, for some reason?

yeah but the closer you get the more expensive it will be

i guess it also depends on how much demand there is for them and how many are in the area

Sorry, mentioning sw london was meant to be a slight comparison as literally up the road from Kingston (surrey!) In my relative inexperience of the countryside East Surrey (i.e - croydon down towards Gatwick/ to redhill) is the less expensive side of surrey, west surrey - dorking across is more expensive, infact the further west you get the more expensive life becomes in Surrey! I have a friend who lives in W. Surrey and has a 1 bed house, 2nd baby on way and desperate to move in the area but waaaay to pricey to move up to the next 2/3 bed level and although I am not totally in with the prices of childcare I am assuming it follows the housing market as where we live it is £30/40 for day but then we are in a less expensive part of the south.

btw am not being difficult about e/w surrey but fact of life that some parts of a county are more expensive than others - go 15 miles east of us and you are up £100,000 at least for a similar size house!

£25 for DS who is nearly 2 that is 8-3, breakfast, snacks and a 2 course cooked lunch.

DD same housrs is £45 per week with vouchers, hot food, breakfast and snacks.

Surstart nursery.

I'm a Surrey (East) childminder and I charge £5 per hour, that includes all meals, snacks, drinks, and lots of activities/outings.

My DD2 went to nursery for a few months, twice a week and it was £400 a month!

Surrey is an expensive area to live.