Can nursery say they only allow 30 free hours on 4 or more days?

[iliketobooogie]

Our nursery have a fees table.
Set out with:

• 7, 8 or 9 hour days,
• for 3, 4 or 5 days/week
• on either 30 free hours, 15 free hour or under 2 years prices.

It looks like they accept the 15 free hours on any combination of days/hours. But only accept 30 free hours on 4 or 5 days a week.

So with me only working 3 days a week, can I not benefit from the 30 free hours at this nursery?

Yes they can

Yes, they can do this.

So with me only working 3 days a week, can I not benefit from the 30 free hours at this nursery?

well you could put your child in for the fourth day that you don’t work and get the 30 hours but you choose not to. So it’s really down to you op

How can you benefit from 30 free hours over 3 days if the maximum day length they have is 9 hours? They're not offering 10 hour days.

Because most private nurseries stretch hours across the year which works out as about 22 hours a week.

The nursery will need to do whatever it can to make itself financially viable. That often means limiting the number of hours, only allowing the so-called "free" hours at certain times etc.

Unfortunately, calling the 30 (or the 15) subsidised hours "free" is a misdescription on the government's part, a con if you like.

I used to work in a nursery. Years ago, before nursery vouchers, nursery grant, early years free entitlement etc etc existed, we used occasionally to have children referred for a free nursery place by the local council. I used to invoice the council for the child's sessions. Those were genuinely free places, funded by the council. Nowadays, nurseries are lucky if the funding amounts to 50% of their fees, so they have to fiddle about with the timings, hours etc in order to try to make up for the shortfall.

I was just about to say the same as previous poster.
DC will be attending all year round so hours will be stretched so 27 hours a week could be covered by funded hours but obviously nursery cannot afford to do this..

You benefit from the 30 hours discount once child is eligible. Think of it as a discount instead of "free" and it will make more sense.

How does that stretch to 27 hours are they closed 10 weeks a year?

Stretched hours is 1140 hours divided by the number of weeks a setting is open .....some will stretch termy in my borough there are 2 13 week terms and a 12 week term so the summer term is divided by 19 weeks