3 year old top up nursery fee

[lthpheonix]

So both my children have gone to this same chain of nursery. My eldest cost something like 50p a day for food to top up the 30 hours or 20 something hours stretched. Now my middle child has been going to the same nursery and it was put up to a £1 and hour, fine no biggy cost of living etc. he only does 15 hours as they didn’t have room for him. It then went up to £1.95 an hour, so almost double and now we have had an email saying it will be £2.40 an hour. Is this reasonable? His half day is £12 which is 5 hours and full day is £24. Many thanks for thoughts on this. (Also it says that the local government is giving out more money to childcare in the new year to help but this is when the new hourly rate is going up also)

Have they presented this as compulsory? As any top up fees should be voluntary or they should provide a breakdown of what the costs cover.

Yes it seems to be, they said it is for paying the staff more money.

Our charges are going up to reflect the increase in the living wage which our nursery pays their staff so if your nursery does the same that might make sense?

The government funding often doesn't actually cover the costs of your child being at the nursery for a day, which is why they do top-ups. Because of that, I'm of the opinion that I'd rather pay a small top-up than have to find a new nursery if ours closes because of money troubles. However, that is a big top-up!
Edited because I just read it again, and my sleep-addled brain did not grasp it first time around so I thought full fees were £24 a day! Was very jealous.

Where I live too up fees are just under £50 per day. So yours seem reasonable to me…

They’re not allowed to charge for staff costs. It’s supposed to be for specific items. Ask for an itemised breakdown because you are being ripped off

The government doesn't fund it correctly. The top up fee will be the difference between the funding and what it costs. You'll find top up fees will be increasing because originally the under 3s whose parents were paying the full amount were subsidising those that got the 30 hours. With the 15 hours coming in for the over 2s there will be more children needing subsidising with less to do the subsidising.
Argue it all you want but nurseries need to do this to stay afloat.

It’s tricky because they’re not supposed to charge top ups to pay staff. But the government don’t actually fund it properly. Ours is £3 for lunch/dinner so £6 if there all day.

Most nurseries do this.
If you want 15 free hours you’ll probably need to go to a pre-school run by a charity or school

The funding formula that the gov uses is terrible and underfunds by quite a bit. Lots of nurseries are going to close. It’s a shit show.

parents need to know that although on the face of it it’s a great scheme it sober cover the costs at all of a nursery.

so while the increases you’ve been quoted are steep, it’s still quite cheap!

Op, if you don't think your £2.40 hourly is good value for childcare you need to rethink. Nurseries are chronically underfunded.

Thanks everyone for your help! I’m currently on may leave so I don’t have a lot of funds until I go back to work. I understand why they charge extra. My eldest who is now in year one only cost £1 per day he was there so now going to £2.40 an hour is a lot for me. Also read on the news that the government is going to be paying preschools £5.88 per child in January so I’m hoping it’s not going to go up again as I would have to pull him out for his half day. Thanks for everyone’s input. I get paying the staff more I work min wage in retail 🤣

that £5.88 is an average rate, each local authority have different rates for Funding and of tha they also take their cut before passing the rest on to childcare providers. My local authority only pay £4.48 to us per hour.

That’s probably one of the highest rates sadly. Ours gets about £5. Partly because Local authorities also take part of it for ‘admin’ which I think is dreadful!

Also minimum wage is going up by 10% in April which means the childcare wages will be going up by thousands for each setting.
I used a preschool so I didn’t have to pay any extra money over my 15 funded hours. Chain nurseries nearly always charge on top.
So depending how old is he you could always change provider.

That rate would be no where near what the childcare providers get , it depends on where in the county they are, the published rate will be what the LA will get. They then cream off the 5% the remaining money is then further divided down into age of child, sen, deprived areas , level of qualification for staff. I lost over a £1 per hour when I offered the funded hours and is the main reason I no longer work in the sector , would you work for £3.80 and hour?

The LA take a top slice so they can hild
central services that are paid for and that every setting can access. It is not admin.

we take the equivalent of 1p per child per day which if we gave back to settings would be nothing. Collectively though there is a value in holding that cash to pay for other stuff. Like training, like additional suppprt services, translations services. And so on.