price increase

[brightonmummy2]

My childminder has sent through her January invoice, and this shows she is now charging 5.25 an hour instead of 5 as last year. She never mentioned anything to me, but where might I look to find details of when I should expect further increases? Would this be in a contract, or is it normal practise for prices to go up each year? My DD has been with her for 6 months.

Contract may say at what time of year fees are reviewed.
Newsletters/emails from your childminder may have mentioned fee increase.

There is no normal practise, every provider can do as they like, they run their own business.

Ask your childminder about it. I would have thought there would be some kind of notification. Negotiate a fee if you feel the new fee is unaffordable, though do try to look at things overall rather than per-hour if comparing with other providers.

Your contract should have a review date.

I told parents about my increases 3 months in advance and got them all to sign to agree to the change and some of them still forgot

It is pretty normal practice for the fees to go up each year, in the same way that nurseries increase their fees and the cost of everything else goes up too. You should have been told in advance though and most contracts have a notice period for fee increases, usually about 4 weeks. Some childminders will increase all the fees at once, say in January, while others will stagger the increase for different families and raise the rates at each 12 month anniversary of a child starting. Why don't you just ask her why the rate has gone up and see what see says.

I would be a bit annoyed if the price went up without a conversation/letter/other form of communication taking place to inform me about it. It's not that I wouldn't pay the extra money or think my childcare isn't worth it but just I would think it bad manners to not discuss it or let me know in advance.