Which childcare funding route

[TheMayFamily]

Hi

I have a one year old who is going to be starting nursery in September, this is going to cost us £1235 a month. I also have a six year old who attends breakfast club at £120 a month

My husband and I have a combined income of approximately £80,000 which equates to about £4500 a month. The only additional income we receive is child benefit.

Please could people point me into the right sort of direction for UK Government childcare subsidies. I feel like there are multiple options and I would appreciate anyone who is able to give me an idea of what the most beneficial route would be for us.

Many thanks
Lou

I think your only option at the moment is Tax Free Childcare which would give you up to £2,000 per year tax relief (20% of the bill) per child.

Your younger child will receive some funded hours at some stage but not yet.

Tax free childcare for each of them, saves us a fortune especially on the FT nursery fees every month

Tax Free Childcare is what you need. You’ll need to register both children. It’s a bit of an art to figure the process out, but once you’re there it’s ok.

Basically you pay money into your tax free childcare account. The government then tops up an extra 20%. So if you pay in £800, the Government will pay in £200. You then pay your childcare providers from this account.

You have to re confirm that you’re eligible every so often (think it’s three monthly). But they email to remind you.

https://www.gov.uk/tax-free-childcare

Tax free childcare for both is your only option right now. It's easy to set up an account. That will save you 20% of your eldest's childcare bill, and £500 every 3 months for your youngest.

When your youngest is eligible, they will get funded hours - I'm not sure when is as the government is bringing in more free hours for younger children next year, but you can look it up.

Thank you very much to everyone who has replied so far, it's interesting to see no one has mentioned the Universal Credit route, is this because our income is above a particular threshold/it's a faff to sort out?

There are not multiple routes, unless you still receive childcare vouchers having paid in to them before they were stopped around 5 years ago.

Assuming you’re not on a visa which restricts access to public funds, you’ll be able to use tax free childcare, and when your child is old enough, the funded hours too.

As a PP says, there are no other routes on an income of £80k. Tax free childcare is the only option!

Thank you, I'm in a fortunate position that due to a promotion my income has increased quite a bit from September so I had a feeling this would have a knock on effect but I'm grateful to everyone for pointing me in the right direction

You definitely can't get help through universal credit at that income.

We have a very similar household income and use tax free childcare and funded hours. It's very expensive.

UC is not available to you, well I'd assume it isn't as it's not available to us and our joint income is under £65k and we have the same childcare costs as you.

Yes exactly, probably when your six year old was little you were in the changeover from vouchers to tax free childcare and so you needed to consider which option worked best for your family. But these days it's just tax free childcare.

You could try to see if you are eligible for Universal Credit but I don't think you would qualify for that.
Some calculators:
https://www.betteroffcalculator.co.uk/login
https://benefits-calculator.turn2us.org.uk/

Tax-Free Childcare scheme is the most likely scheme you can use.