15 free hours, how is your nursery allocating/charging?

[beanie20030]

Would like to compare how your nursery are allocating the 15 hours free childcare that started for two year olds in April 24?

My son started 3 full days from 1st April. A total of 21 hours per week.

We recently received our bill and it seemed excessive. On questioning this with the nursery I have been told that they will only allocate the free 15 hours to either mornings or afternoons and not both. So to benefit I must send my son either for 5 mornings or 5 afternoons. If I want him to attend a full day I must pay for half and cannot claim free hours for a full day.

I was not aware of this and feel that I have been mislead.

How can I do a full days work when I can only send my son for feee for half a day??!!

Grateful to hear other peoples experiences please :)

Well my nursery is closing down their second branch because it’s no longer financially viable, in part because the govt’s half arsed scheme. So bear that in mind.

My 3YO attends 5 mornings, 17 hours a week, term time only so 15 hours should be ‘free’ leaving us paying for 2 but somehow it still costs £2000 a term. No ‘consumables’ either except maybe some toilet paper as he’s potty trained and takes his own snack. As I understand it the government funding doesn’t come close to what it actually costs the nursery to look after a child. His previous nursery closed down so I’m not complaining.

You need to pay for the other half day.

The funding doesn’t cover the actual cost of the place, so nurseries are introducing their own policies to account for that.

Id be surprised if any nursery would allow 7 hours a day to be counted as a ‘full’ days either, as they have their opening hours and will charge for that period regardless of how long they’re there.

My nursery isn’t offering the hours!

Are they claiming they use all 15 hours, or are you free to use remainder elsewhere?

Our nursery lets you use them however, but the rest of the week (the remaining hours not covered) is charged at a higher hourly rate than we were paying before.
Previously we had a day rate for 10 hours, and we now pay more per hour, plus food. So it doesn't save much.

I don't blame them. I know it's not that well funded. I really really wish Sunak and Hunt et al would get pulled up every time they use the words "free hours". Call it what it is - funded hours.

No allocation at all as there's no funded hours here. <sob>

2 mornings, £127 for consumables and snacks. My 2 yr would not attend otherwise.

Back when it was only 15hrs for 3yos... this was normal. Its term time only too.

Mine isn't doing anything so fancy which i am surprised but glad about. They have prro rated the hours over the year as they don't do term time only. So we get 11 hours. They then taken these hours off the total hours we use. However we use 40 hours ( assuming we didn't pick up early, which we do). We pay for 29 hours. For them the funding value supposed to be higher than our hourly rate. They obviously get the difference. I am just glad that there hourly rate hasn't gone up. I was half expecting it would too

We pay a separate significant charge for food too

Our nursery is the same, however you can use them on afternoon sessions only. If you want then in for a full day you have to pay to add on the morning session which is £40 a day. A full day is £75 meaning you save £35 a day.

In the end it took our bill down from £1300 a month per child to £1000 a month per child.

Thanks everyone for your replies. Opened my eyes a bit to be honest, no idea there was such variability. Have to remind myself that I'm lucky to get the 15 hours at all!

My 2 year old nephew goes to a tiny village nursery (too far away for me) for three full days so the same as my son. But she is able to use her 15 hours against whichever session she likes. As you can imagine this has drastically reduced her bill, she is very lucky. Frustrating there isn't any consistency.

Better communication from the nursery would have helped, but at least I know now and can consider adjusting the hours.

Thanks all!

We use nursery 3 full days a week also. Our monthly bill before april was nearly £800 but because of the government tax fee childcare scheme we were actually paying £675 a month. We now pay £400 a month from April.
Our nursery is charging 1day at full price £71 and then the other 2 days at £25 this includes all food and consumables! In Sept then it reduces by another 15 hours so I. E 30 hours funding

My nursery makes is 11 hours a week stretched over the whole year , which is one day a week free

Ours only allow so many of their hours per session to be funded.. so although my little one is in for 10hrs on a Monday, 7 of those are funded and we pay a hourly rate on the remaining ones. Half days 3.5 hours are funded and we pay for the remaining 1.5hrs. Unfunded fees were £80 a day, £40.50 a half day and have reduced to £22 full day or £12 half day.