30 hours childcare - parent vs nursery!

[MacciJ]

Hello everyone, could use your urgent advice

My daughter is 3 and born in January and we're entitled to 30 hours free childcare from 1st April.. Due to annualised billing they are saying that the bill is £450 a month inclusive of 30 hours free. I can't wrap my head around it as my daughter only goes 3 days per week with (30 hours anyway) - how it can be this much?

So my girlfriend works at a nursery which was brought out by one of those big nursery companies a few months back - we were told our rate for our daughter going there wouldn't change (and now it has but we didn't agree or ever know about it?) It's like 40/50 a month - is this legal?

Private nurseries seem to do their own thing ...my GDs have all been to council nurseries... 9 to 3.15 mon to fri term time only ...all free....if they attend in hols its 35£ 9 to 3.15 pm and £4 for each hour before or after

Apologies - its across 38 weeks of the year (aka term time) as per the Gov website.

Seems quite a lot!!

My 3 year old goes 3 full days a week even includes breakfast club I think her daily rate is £46/£47 and with the 30 free hours averaged out over the year I pay £147 - £160 a month.

Have you asked them for a break down? That really doesn't seem right

Between 1st April and 1st September (5 months or 22 weeks) the free hours is 6 hours per day for 12 of those 22 weeks.

So you are getting 660 hours of childcare of which 216 are free.

£450 per month works out as barely more than £5 per hour for the 444 hours which aren't covered by the free hours.

It could easily be right. My son's nursery has a daily rate of £75, he does 4 days a week and after funded hours finding, we have £796 a month to pay.

@kitcat15

Private nurseries seem to do their own thing ...my GDs have all been to council nurseries... 9 to 3.15 mon to fri term time only ...all free....if they attend in hols its 35£ 9 to 3.15 pm and £4 for each hour before or after

£4 per hour is not much though is it? I've paid more per hour for parking.

The funded hours are normally capped at 6 per day so if your DC goes 3 days a week that's a max of 18 funded hours per week (term time only) or less if annualised.across 50+ weeks.

Looks like your nursery is doing:-
Term time - 30 hours, of which 9am-3pm is funded, so you are using 18 funded hours and 12 unfunded hours per week. For 38 weeks of the year.
School holidays - 30 hours per week, of which none are funded, for the remaining 14 weeks of the year.

So over the course of a year, that's a total of hope my maths is right!!

684 funded hours (out of a potential 1140), and 876 unfunded hours.

Your total annual cost to the nursery is £5400, which if you are purely being billed for the unfunded hours (and no extras like meals), gives an hourly rate of £6.16. Which seems reasonable.

That’s right OP. My DD does slightly less than 30 hours a week and our bill is £400 a month.

Thought I'd share more clarity as we get a staff discount which I incorporated in to my cost

Actual Monthly fees
3 days x £63.75 = £191.25 x 51 weeks = £9,753.75 / 12 months = £812.81 - Staff Discount 20%

30 hours funding x 11 weeks = 330 hours / 5 months = 66 hours. (April-August)

From September this will be recalculated from September 2022 to August 2023 which is 30 hrs x 38 term weeks / 12 months = 95 hours.

Right, so the current issue is that it's a term of funding spread across April to September. Which means once you hit September it will get much cheaper again, I reckon you'll be paying something like 7.5 hours a week so maybe even less than £200 a month, before staff discount. Don't forget to use tax free childcare, that's another 20% off on top.

Think we've lucked out with our nursery reading some of these figures! Ours is only £40 a day for 3-5s, so OP's funded figure is not far off what it would be for three days not-funded at all at our nursery! 🥴

With my DD 'snursery at ages 3-4 you have to attend a minimum of 3 days a week for the entire year, 48 weeks.

Then they calculate 2 of those days are funded if you get 30 hours and you pay for the other days.

This makes it easier for everyone to calculate it.

I pay £110 a month for 3 days per week, which is just £5 lunch and £3.50 tea each day.

That's across the whole year, not just term time so sounds like we're getting a very good deal.

@GeorgieTheGorgeousGoat

Also just to say, the Summer term in our borough doesn't start until 25th April so that's almost a month less than you were expecting.

I think this is important. My daughter turned 3 in January and my bill this month was higher than expected but it turns out only 1 week was at the 30 free hours. Hoping for a lighter bill next month

Don’t forget meals and other consumables are not included. So even for the 30 funded hours you may still have to pay. My nursery charges £2.70 for lunch then additional for snacks but they can bring their own.

My DD goes 3 full days a week (10 hour days ) all year round. With the funded hours, we pay approx £250 a month after tax free childcare discount.

Ask your nursery to talk you through how they work out your bills. I did this with my nursery when we became entitled to the 30 hours and they were not applying it properly. They adjusted it which led to a small saving for me, but we still paid a lot on top of the free hours. Have moved to council nursery this year - shorter days, no flexibility but it is actually free!

The cost will vary hugely depending where you are in the country. There's someone upthread who is only paying £40 or £45 for a day, whereas the nursery we used charged £75 for per day for that age group.

Ours also did the funded sessions as 9-12 and 2-5pm. So they then charged for 7-9am, 12-2pm and 5-6.30pm (= 5.5 hours a day to pay for, with 6 hours funded). And in school holidays 11.5 hours a day as no funding then. That was then averaged out over the year. Nursery was open 52 weeks per year and only closed on bank holidays.

DS does 3 days a week, 9-4, all year round, stretching the 30 hours. Some nurseries do this, some don't. Its hard to book him in extra days though as they bunch these kids in on the same days and.dont have the staff extra for quieter days if you want to book in. I pay the consumables and meals for those hours so works out at about 70 quid a month usually Instead of hundreds a month pre the hours kicking in. If he did term time only I'd get 5 days a week him in nursery, but he'd be home for school holidays. You pay for any extra time/days outside of that provision. I can't afford him in 5 days, year round, so WFH on his off days when I can.

The stretched funding equating to 22 hours can be misleading depending on each boroughs rules. The funding runs April to April not a school year. Soe children get more than 1 year of nursery. My la tell us how many hours can be claimed each term this term there are 13 weeks paid at 30 hours but stretched funding needs to go over 22 weeks....that 17.7 hours a week not 22. If we give 22 we won't get paid the difference if the child leaves we would be out of pocket. If the child transfers to take 15 hours of funding at school we then have to also claim term time only and there must be enough funding left to pay for the schools term time fees of 25 weeks so again we won't get paid the full 22 hours this term ....parents don't always know what they are doing come September in March ....our deadline was last Friday.
So you need to find out what the setting is claiming as well as if they have set funding hours.

Mine goes to nursery 3.5 days a week.
I have 30 hours free from Gov
Monthly bill is around £800 pcm
Yours sounds cheap in comparison

Perhaps look at a local term time
Only pre school?

I do in a nursery and stories like this make me cross. As a parent you should be able to access the ‘30hrs’ entitlement as you wish. If your nursery is open all year ask if the ‘stretch’ the funding. In my area if you stretch it over 48wks instead of 39 then it equates to 24hrs per week and then parents pay for additional hours (in your case the extra 6hrs per week) all year round. This means it works out cheaper for the parent plus is an even amount each month. Doing it the other way (30hrs per week term time funded then charging for 30hrs per week in holidays) works out far more expensive which is why the nursery does it this way rather than offering you the option to ‘stretch’ thefunding. Would be worth asking if you can do it that way as would be cheaper. I certainly wouldn’t be happy paying that amount when you get 30hrs funded. I also wouldn’t be happy seeing my child to a nursery who operate this way and wants to make as much money as possible (unfortunately this is often the case in large nurseries ime)

@Lifeispassingby

I do in a nursery and stories like this make me cross. As a parent you should be able to access the ‘30hrs’ entitlement as you wish. If your nursery is open all year ask if the ‘stretch’ the funding. In my area if you stretch it over 48wks instead of 39 then it equates to 24hrs per week and then parents pay for additional hours (in your case the extra 6hrs per week) all year round. This means it works out cheaper for the parent plus is an even amount each month. Doing it the other way (30hrs per week term time funded then charging for 30hrs per week in holidays) works out far more expensive which is why the nursery does it this way rather than offering you the option to ‘stretch’ thefunding. Would be worth asking if you can do it that way as would be cheaper. I certainly wouldn’t be happy paying that amount when you get 30hrs funded. I also wouldn’t be happy seeing my child to a nursery who operate this way and wants to make as much money as possible (unfortunately this is often the case in large nurseries ime)

Nurseries are struggling to survive how do you think they are going to cover the increase in minimum wage, increase to fuel bills food bills etc alongside being forced by government to take most children for less than an economical rate? The government want them to have more children to less staff are you happy to have a staff member caring for maybe 10 children? The other government suggestions are to have sessions and increase fees around thoes sessions, to cut all pay to minimum wage so nobody is compensated for extra responsibility or training (the sector already pays very low wages) to ask for volunteer parents to do admin etc, and to take in ironing

We pay £700pcm for 25 hours... So considering you're getting 20hrs on top plus holidays spread out through the year, it seems like a decent discount. Don't forget they charge for food and other consumables.