Nursery are threatening to remove my child as I questioned fees

[Girlmum1984]

My daughter turns 3 in a few weeks and we will be able to claim 30 free hours. When this happens, my consumables fee will increase from £12 a day to £29. have questioned this with management and asked for a breakdown of what this fee includes. They have listed food, nappies etc as well as a few activities (baking, PE classes, music classes). The activities listed take place twice month and so far haven’t been on the day that my child attends. All of this would never add up to £29 daily.

Unsatisfied with the response, I emailed the local council to understand how consumables fees can be issued to parents and it there were any regulations. As a result, they contacted the nursery manager and investigated. They were satisfied with the findings and basically said there are no regulations they need to follow when it comes to consumables fees and they can charge what they like. Annoying, but fine.
I have now had an official looking email from my nursery to say I have impacted the staffs mental health by making this enquiry and they are going to discuss whether our contact will be terminated as a result!
I’ve never had any issues with staff in the past and we’ve always been on friendly terms. My daughter enjoys the setting and the care they provide isn’t in question.

can they kick her out as their manager has an issue with me contacting the council about them? Thanks

I also work charity section so we not even attempting to make a profit. Even so, despite working incredibly hard for a pittance the struggle to keep afloat is very real. Posters here suggesting that settings are simply greedy or badly managed are deeply depressing and you do start to wonder why you bother.

Even from the outside its obvious that despite the funding tbeing the same, the overheads could be very different.

Its a few years ago now, (my youngest is Yr7!) But they attended a nursery at DHs workplace. A 3hr block was £8.50 when they started (£12 by time youngest left) .. the nursery didn't have to pay any rent, or utilities. Just staff and equipment (we had to provide nappies and meals). It was less than half the price of a commercial nursery. (And by staff... literally just the childcare workers... maintenance and cleaning was also provided by the business)

Compared to commercial sector. Manager, admin, cleaners, maintenance staff, chef for staff. Rent or mortgage, council tax. Utilities.
Thats before you get to equipment, food, materials.

Its not an even playing field.

For truly cheap childcare, it needs to ve a state provision, not just "funding" to private businesses. Thats why school preschools end up cheaper too.

Thank you to those working in the nursery sector

Yes we had a 50 c fee request for fruit but I’m not sure that was mandatory . I don’t get it . The funding pays close to £6 per hour per child , surely that’s plenty for nurseries unless the owners want to line their pockets .

Then why do those in Scotland do with it asking parents money and those in England don’t ? Because plenty of stuff is not expensive up here as utilities as a example

Them having increased overheads do not justify them lying. It's fraud, and 'I won't make money otherwise' is not a defence.

That said, I appreciate that the funding should (sometimes) be higher, and that a nursery in central London has higher overheads than rural north England (I'm in neither). Thankfully the funding they get would be higher in the former.

Some places in London are £9+ an hour. It's £5.47 where I live. With a ratio of 8 that's £72 an hour per staff member. Take the London 'living wage' off that (some will be paid slightly more, young staff and apprentices less, so I'm using it as average), and there is £58 an hour (or £74k a month if 8 staff members for 8 hour days? 'left' for employer contributions and business overheads.

I appreciate that in some areas the margins are very lean and the formula used needs to be mindful of this.

But people making out that the providers all get five pound something are ignoring the regional variations.

I picked a busy bees nursery near me (SE ENGLAND) Their daily fees (7-7) were £100 for 3-4 year olds ie £8.33 an hour. So £6 an hour is falling short.

Their staff live in SE England, where rent is high etc etc. I don’t know if they pay above minimum wage but they may need to do so. I am sure that the company makes a profit, but it also requires investment to buy and fit out new nurseries etc, and investors need loans and interest paid etc. They are open for long hours (needed for a commuter town) and so may have to pay a little more to the early and late shifts too.

The small owner managed nursery where my kids went charges £81 for a 3-4 year old ten hour day (so, £8.10 an hour) and I know that the owner does the invoicing in her spare time etc and is absolutely not raking it in.

The 2024/25 rate in my county is £6.77 of which I believe the LA can take 5% admin fee before passing on to the provider

Sometimes choosing a nursery means picking the best of a bad bunch (having visited multiple nurseries to check them out beforehand).
Still means that some staff / managers are very much like this IME… (and the lovely ones end up leaving)

Because the Scottish government pays more to the childcare providers than the English government.

Ok that makes sense so there are regional variations , I asked early on and was told it was all the same .

Are "the lovely ones" leaving your specific nursery or the profession as a whole and why do you think that it is?

As a mother myself I cannot conceive of ever leaving my child in the care of anyone I wasn't 100 percent sure of so am totally unequipped to comment on your decision to put yours in what you feel to be "the best of a bad bunch".

Saying I queried a rise in fees and asked the local authority which items the nursery were permitted to charge extra for. Subsequently the nursery terminated our arrangement, which is a shame as my child was very happy there.

Factual stuff.

I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure you'll find the £9+ figure is for younger children who require a higher ratio.
We get just under £5.70 in funding per 3 year old. So that's £45.60 per staff member by your calculation (1:8 ratio). In each room/age group one staff member has to have a Level 3 qualification and half of all others have to have a Level 2 or above. So if you have 2 staff members they both need to be qualified. We pay a paultry 5p on top of minimum wage per level of qualification, then add Nics, holiday pay etc.
But we can't really run completely to ratio because sometimes staff need breaks, have to do paperwork, plan activities, have meetings, plan next steps, have supervisions (required by Ofsted). Then they've got to do mandatory training. So either we're paying them extra hours or we need extra staff to cover. And you've got to have a named manager and deputy and yes they can be 'in numbers' but they also have managerial and supervisory roles they have to complete. And you need a SENDCO and DSL who will both need some extra time to complete those roles.
Then there's all the overheads of a building, utilities etc. Plus an annual fee to Ofsted etc etc.
Then you get to equipment, toys, consumables.
So no, the money doesn't go very far.

I'm not disputing most of your post, but no, that's the base rate for 3-4yo in some parts of London.

I've put a screenshot below, though I had to zoom out a lot, so I hope you can see it. So Camden (for example) is £9.04, Durham is £5.47, Greenwich is £7.56, Milton Keynes is £6.11. The additional funding is obviously on top and the amounts for younger ones is substantially more.

I don't think the regional pricing goes far enough - it's only the most expensive places that seem to get a substantial boost, and there's no factoring in of city centre Vs suburbs property pricing (save for London), but it's easy for people to assume that the £5 something rate is universal.

OP was told additopnal costs were in part made up of events her child did not even take part in. I don't get mothers piling into her because she dared to go to the council when they did not actually address the resl issue honestly. Why not just admit that government funding does not cover actual cost so this is their only way of staying viable. An honest answer even if unpalatable would have been the right thing to do. Of course it would have opened what is obviously an open secret can of worms which the government of the day is obliged to address honestly too.

I think, as per your OP, of both parties ‘being on friendly terms’ no longer applies here @Girlmum1984.

I don’t really understand the righteous indignation given that you basically tried to shaft them.

They literally want nothing more to do with you and I can understand to be honest.Fine to query them, as is your right, but to escalate it in such a fashion is duplicitous and unfair.

It's not 'secret ' to anyone paying attention.

Why not just admit that government funding does not cover actual cost so this is their only way of staying viable.

This has been asked and answered several times - see the PP whose nursery now cannot offer any funded places after a similar complaint and how much worse that is for all the kids there.

I’d be annoyed to be expected to pay for activities that are happening on the days my child isn’t there, along with nappies if they’re potty trained. I understand the funded hours don’t cover much when it comes to nurseries but to be expected to cover a cost that isn’t benefitting your child I would query too.

After reading some of the replies on here the OP’s mental health will be severely impacted!

You're massively mistaken if you think staff of 'in ratio adults' is the only thing the funding is expected to cover. For a start you have other staff such as cooks or admin or cleaners... and then there's about 200 other expense lines that this is expected to cover.

I think on the surface it looks like a lot of money. I'm a CM and I'd love to show people my tax return. Even by your own admission it's a tiny part of the country getting the rate you're quoting.

Yes, they can terminate your contract for pretty much any reason.

I will say though, it’s strange the reasoning is upsetting the staff as they should never have been part of the fee conversation. That is between you, the manager and the owner.

If a parent at my nursery questioned the prices or funding, I certainly wouldn’t be upset by this? (I would probably agree - the fees at my nursery are insane!!)

But again, they can charge whatever they like and they can terminate your contract for whatever reason at any time. Maybe read the terms and conditions given when you signed up and see what they say?

Is this really a worry for parents?

There haven’t been many parents I haven’t liked over the years but there’s definitely been a few. I have never treated them any different to all the other children and provide them with the same level of care, respect, love etc

I forgot the screenshot