Notice leaving after school club

[finaldj]

Started my daughter in an after school club, We don't really like the place and we've had issues with the owner regarding payments and them being open about them. signed our daughter upto another one to start in January 2023 that has a load of school friends. Everything with this ASC is done online even talking to the owner has to be done via zoom meetings. I've gone on tonight to hand our termination notice in and seen that they ask for a terms notice in advance to be given. 1st October - 31 Dec. 1 Feb -14 April and so forth. We have missed the 1st Oct deadline so I have said to the wife the next notice given is 1 Feb it states on the site if you leave before the dates given you are still liable for the whole fees. so for us if we hand notice in today they will want 7 months pay. There is no option on the site to say you want to leave early everything is do you agree to the terms and there isn't a NO option everything has to be yes. They don't accept leave notice via email, hand written or in person. Its all done very under handed I've never in my life seen any childcare provider need this much notice to leave them most are around 4 weeks. I don't understand it's and after school club why do they need a whole terms notice in advance to leave. There are only 2 children going my daughter and another child she doesn't like it. This place have you tied in knots legally. Has anyone had anything like this before? we are going to pay till the end of Dec and make up the difference in payments as we were paying over 12 months but really we are giving 11 weeks notice surely legally this wouldn't stand up in court to force us set dates to hand notice in?

I would give them notice that you will not be returning after Xmas. Pay them until end of December and no more.

Worst case they take you to the small claims court but I don't fancy their chances because their notice period is completely unreasonable.

Good luck.

Thank you, we have given them 11 weeks notice by email but it does state on their T&C that they don't accept termination by , Email , Text or verbally but it doesn't state written so will hand this notice into them on Friday written as well.

the whole T&C are treatening. I had a good read tonight and this is another thing they state taking into account this is a private after school club.

If the child is moving to a different country or county, we must be notified of where the child will live and with

whom. This will allow us to update the Local Authority on the child’s whereabouts so that they are not

classified as missing in education or lead to a cause of Safeguarding Concerns.

This is an afterschool club there are 15 pages of rattling on about things like this I've never seen anything like it. I'm glad she is going to be honest I had bad vibes about the place in March when I went to look at it but was desperate for childcare with us both working.