I have a wonderful nanny and we are trying to work together to see if we can make it work for another year (come September 2021) once COVID is mostly over and kids are back (fingers crossed) at school full time. I have children currently in Yr1 and Y3 and this year was happy to pay a massive premium to have her on call for lockdown. She has some self employed term time work which is not available to her in lockdown so the arrangement has worked quite well during this fairly shitty time.
I am more than happy to pay her a premium if we go towards a 'normal' after school nanny plus half the holidays role but the question is what is the 'normal' rate?
I currently pay 25k per year through PAYE and pay normal statutory pension contributions as well. It's nominally 18 per hour but I totally overestimated the number of hours I'd need this year and even if she worked full-time until Easter, we probably won't use all the hours that technically I am paying her for (which is fine and my choice for peace of mind). So her real hourly rate is much higher albeit I recognise that she needs to be available.
I'd like to reduce my childcare costs a bit though now they are full time at school and there is more flexibility in our jobs and lives (WFH, possibly even seeing grandparents more eventually!). We won't need full time in the holidays - more like a week at Christmas, a week at easter, one half term week and 2 weeks in the summer - and we could probably manage with less. We have pretty generous holiday and family in good health to help with some of the load when we can see each other again.
So what's the going rate for a good after school nanny in Zone 2 London? I don't want a live in nanny and we don't have space for an au pair. Would prefer not to have nanny with own child if only because I am finally able to have nice things in my house and it's not fair on a little kid to have to keep things to that standard.
If it's going to be 20 per hour (although for a more realistic 800-900 hours a year) then maybe it's better to agree to pay my current nanny eg 22ph.