Full time nursery - South East England how much did you get for the 30 hours "free childcare"?

[theholidaymum]

Just wondering if there are any parents who send kid at nursery full time, all year round and getting 30 hours funded currently.
How much did you pay before the 30 hours funded kicked in?
and How much do you pay now once the funded hours started?
Is there a set number of £ equivalent for the 30 hours funded amount that I can look into?
We currently pay £1700/ month for our son's nursery (eyes watering expensive). He will turn 3 in in May, so we should be eligible for 30 hours funded in September. Just wondering how much will it actually save per month in term of nursery fees? I look around but it isn't very clear and confusing. We haven't asked our nursery yet how much we will need to pay to top up (they will 100% charge top up). Just want to make sure they wont try to overcharge us.
Thanks

I’m not sure on the 30 hours as we only receive 15 hours funded. But our full time monthly fee went from £1500 to £1200. So hopefully you should get a discount of around £600 assuming ours is typical!

thanks. £600/month isn't great vs. what we are paying, but it will help definitely.
Do you also get the tax free credit on top of it as well?

I think you'll save around £600 too. However it depends if you stretch the hours or just use them in term time... not all nurseries will let you stretch so your bill may change month to month. Our place isn't full time but we use all our hours then some and we save £600 on average now (non stretched funding). The top up is £2 per hour.

@theholidaymum just seen your question about tax free top up - yes you still can and that definitely helps too!

My son left nursery in 2020 and his full time bill went from £1200 to £600 when the 30 hours kicked in

You either get tax free childcare or the 30 hours.

ours covered 2 full days (8-6) but in the last year we had to pay a top up of £5 a day as their prices had gone up. That was beginning of last year so no doubt it would have gone up again beginning of 2023. So in other words don’t expect it to knock much off!

thanks! so the amount doesn't seem to change at all. they are talking about increasing all sort of benefits and payments but the 30 hours free hours amount doesn't seem to change much year on year. 🙄 Our nursery has already increasing 10% this year for cost of living inflation. I bet they will again in September. We will probably wont see much benefits then.

thanks

No, you can claim both. My daughter gets 30 hours ‘free’ and we pay the rest using tax free.

same here. We were paying around £1560 last year, and this year goes up to £1700. Will go up again I recon, while the government wont change the hourly rate of funded hours at all. So at the matter of fact, we will end up not seeing much of £600 supposed to help amount.

Our 30hrs funding starts this month - the 30hrs pays for 2 whole days and 2hrs off the 3rd day. We pay a top up fee of about £9 a day for food etc - she goes 3 days a week, the whole year - so we will be paying about £200 instead of £600 a month (Inc tax free childcare addition)
We are in the South West so fees probably a bit less)

We were paying £1500 for full time (10% discount for full time) which went to £1200 as they remove the 10% discount. So we moved nursery. New nursery is much nicer, child much happier, open slightly more and costs less than £650 a month with the funding. Worth looking around for post funding alternative!

Most private nurseries allow stretched funding.....30 hours is term time only over 38 weeks so you calculate 38x30/ number of weeks setting is open often around 22 hours that should be deducted from the hours you use and the normal hourly rate applied to only Those hours ...you can use tac free saving 20% on that. They can charge a voluntary contribution to make up their shortfall. They can also choose to offer session times like 8 to 12,1to3 or fixed days.

This is ours

OP

the only thing you can really do is ask your nursery as they all go about it differently. Some will give the hours free but in set “sessions” eg 9-12, 1-4 and charge a high rate for the hours around them. Some will spread it so it’s 22h a week all year rather than 30h a week in term time. Some will charge a fixed daily top up.

If your current hourly rate is around £8.50, you can look up the reimbursement rates by county. They are usually somewhere between £4 and £6. This will give an idea of what the nursery needs to make up.