30 hours funded childcare

[Whoknows11]

Has anyone ever missed the deadline of renewing your 30 hours funded childcare?

I missed it by 24 hrs and now face a monthly childcare bill of £600 rather than £100.

Anyone who's experienced similar and any advice please?

I've gone to my local authority and contested it but it's gone to head office and I've yet to hear anything but in the meantime childcare provider needs paying!!

They are usually pretty strict about the deadlines, unless it was an error by hmrc. Were you claiming 30 hours with the same childcare provider last term. If you were, you might have a grace period.

I have parents int he nursery who have missed the deadline and have had to pay fees for the whole term
It’s your responsibility to renew the code

That’s a bit shit OP.

Cheers for the reminder of the importance of renewing though. I didn’t think they’d be that strict!

Contested it on what grounds? They email you multiple times in advance!

Emails went into my spam, nursery didn't inform me! I know it's my responsibility but I don't understand if my circumstances haven't changed, still entitled to it, haven't changed childcare providers how it just be taken away from me.

I now have no idea how I'll pay my nursery fees when I'm a single working parent! It's not like I can quit work for the next term!

So annoyed with it all!

Everyone’s renewal dates are different, it’s unfeasible to expect the nursery to remind everyone of when their renewal date is.

I agree, it’s not nursery’s job to remind you. You screwed up on this one, you’re just going to have to suck it up.

I think having to confirm every 3 months can feel quite onerous for some people but imagine if many people forgot, the system would be chaos, so they need tight rules.

Have you looked at the grace periods? They are quite long, depending on dates, a whole term can be given. The LA work closely with providers to keep places and you can download their guidance to check the detail.

There will be a manager of a childcare options team at the LA who can also use their discretion to offer a place if there are real hardship concerns. Have you talked to this team? It is in their interests to keep this funding going not just yours. Remember the Easter break slows everything down.

Alternatively depending on your income have you looked at childcare costs via Tax Credits / Universal Credit until you can reapply for 30 hours? Sometimes people are on the cusp of entitlement and will qualify once the child care costs kick in.

This might help? There is a grace period OP, you shouldn’t have had a bigger bill through yet from the childcare provider as is isn’t that instant. You will still be entitled to the 15 free hours even if you have missed out for the 30...

A. If parents confirm their details and are: no longer eligible, misses the reconfirmation deadline, or chooses not to reconfirm and their child has started a 30 hours place, they will be able to retain their 30 hours free childcare for a limited period known as the grace period. Once the grace period has lapsed, they should be entitled to the universal 15 hour entitlement.

If a child becomes ineligible during the first half of a term, they will be funded until the end of that term. If they become ineligible after half term, they will be funded until the next half term. Specific dates are listed in the department’s statutory guidance (from page 10).

Local authorities should complete an audit check on eligibility codes at six fixed points in the year, as set out in the table of local authority audit dates in the Department of Education’s Statutory Guidance. These audits will enable local authorities to determine which parents are still eligible, and which parents are now in their grace period. Local authorities are expected to pass on this information to the relevant providers as part of this audit process.

That's why I asked if you'd had funding at the same place last term. If you did, you should still have some grace period, unless you already used that.

Sadly the grace period was used - I had no clue I was even in that!

Thanks for the advice!

I've logged an appeal with my local authority but apart from that unsure what else to do.

Randomly got an email yesterday saying I had until May 13th to renew. So I did that yesterday and have a new code! Honestly I have no idea how this is all working and no correspondence explaining!!

Oh dear, sadly does sound like you will have to pay, if you have used your grace period up sounds like you did not renew last time either. As a provider we do not get any notifications that a parent needs to renew unless we are entering hours for the next term. I make it very clear I do not remind parents to renew and I will not hold the space for free either if they decided to drop hours until eligible again.

Check the new code is valid for the summer term before you get too excited. The cut off for new codes to be eligible for the summer term was 31/3. This new one might work from September.

New code says its valid until Aug 13th!

Any idea why that is?

Because you have to do it every three months. May 13th- August 13th = 3 months.

Like I said, you need to ask the nursery to check the code will be accepted on the hub for this term, it might not.

I believe HMRC require parents to renew codes every three months because of problems with other benefits, such as the childcare element of tax credits. With TCs, they didn’t do 3 monthly checks and relied on parents to notify them of changes. This resulted in overpayments, and mums bleating on about how unfair it was they had to repay large sums, and it was all HMRC's fault for "letting" them get into a mess.

For once, I’ve a certain amount of sympathy for HMRC. For all its faults, they’ve at least got a system which tries to prevent similar overpayments, and they still get criticised for it.

At the end of the day, it’s not a lot to ask of parents to renew a code in order to get a few thousand pounds worth of free services.

If you already used your grace period, you should have renewed much sooner. Your child's setting does not get informed, only you do.

I'm a childcare provider (cm)' and remind all my parents to renew their eligibility by the end of each term. So 31 March for summer term, 31 August for winter term and 31 December for spring term.

I have a lot of parents claiming FE but find it helpful to send these reminders out. Its only 3 times a year and benefits me too!

Can't see why nurseries can't do similar?

I work within an Early Years team for a local authority and confirm there is no discretion. We do not allow funding with codes that haven’t been applied for or re-confirmed by the deadline e.g 31 March for funding for this term. The reason for this...if the code isn’t valid, we don’t get the funding from government and can’t afford as an authority to subsidise people without a valid code. Like a p.p.mentions though, just make sure you’re code is valid on 31 August if you want funding in Autumn...so make sure you re-confirm on time.