Childcare costs break £6k barrier - a rise of 33% over the course of this parliament

[KateMumsnet]

Hello all

A report by the Family and Childcare Trust has found that the annual cost of a childcare place has, for the first time, broken the £6,000 barrier, averaging £115.45 per week across Britain. This means that childcare costs have risen by an inflation-busting 33% over the course of this parliament, and that, for families on the lowest incomes, it no longer pays to work.

We'd love to know what you think. Are your childcare costs comparable? Have you found that childcare costs outweigh the benefits of working? Do share your thoughts and experiences below.

I started a thread in AIBU about the fact that the figures referred to in these reports are significantly lower than the amounts actually paid for childcare (particularly in London and the South East).

As posted previously, by way of example our DD is in nursery 4 days per week at a cost of £1,023 per month so annual cost is over £12,200 and that is not even a full time place. We also have an au pair (I accept that may be a bit of a luxury but we have no family nearby to help out and both work full time in demanding jobs). So if we include au pair costs you are looking at £15,000 per annum. That is for 1 child under 3!

If others are paying similar amounts (which I am guessing is the case as DDs nursery is oversubscribed), then these reports are grossly inaccurate and the Gov has no idea of the scale of the issue. With costs like this of course it barely pays for some families to have both parents at work when childcare costs are this high and what generally happens is women leave the workforce (great if it is out of choice to be SAHM but not great if it is due to necessity). And don't even get me started on how hard it must be for single parent families. I just feel like the Gov cannot possibly assist parents if they have no idea of the actual costs involved.

that cost that the trust have pulished is way over what we pay pay for childcare costs.

It seems costs are v high in London/SE but everywhere else they are very reasonable - I don't know why people like the trust don't acknowledge the fact that costs differ depending where people are and then release a report trying to represent the whole country with a single figure when its highly inaccurate.

We pay far more. Part time nursery and part time afterschool care for x2 children costs us £1400 a month for 5 and 3 year old.

We paid more than this for 4 days in the South West 15 years ago.

Actually double it, then.

£6k a year isn't full time though is it?

I paid just over £40 a day for each dc in a Hampshire nursery. so that's around £1,600 a month for full timers?

That can't be for a full time place surely? I consider us quite lucky compared to some, we have a lovely childminder who 'only' costs £4 an hour. DP is self employed and does pick up/drop off so DD goes 9-5 4 days a week but that is still a total of £128 per week. 5 days would be £160 or about 8k a year and I'm sure most people probably pay more than us.

115.45 a week for a full time place is only about £23 a day, where could you get child care for that amount?

The article states part time childcare costs are 6k.

"I don't know why people like the trust don't acknowledge the fact that costs differ depending where people are and then release a report trying to represent the whole country with a single figure when its highly inaccurate."

But they have acknowledged that in their full report which is very detailed and provides breakdowns by area etc. I do agree that headlines can be misleading however it is difficult to summarise all of the information in a quite complex report into headline sound bites that will catch editors attention. I make a habit of always looking at the full report for things like this rather than relying on the simplistic way it is usually presented in the media. The report is available on the trust's website.

Having said that, it would be helpful if press reports actually clarified what they mean by part time (in this case it refers to 25 hours per week) as without this information the figures being presented fairly meaningless.

Sorry, on my phone so couldn't access the article. That makes a bit more sense, 25 hours a week would be £100 for us. Im guessing they quote 25 hours as the difference you would have to cover if you were entitled to the 15 hours free?

Here it costs £85/child/day for a good nursery. I had to quit my job when we unexpectedly had twins as I was only making £21k/year and would have been paying almost twice my salary to go back to work. Thankfully, DH makes more than I did and can support us. Not sure how we could have coped if our earnings had been more equal and we both needed to work to survive.

Why do they quote the cost of 25 hours?

If you need to work full time 9-5 you need 50 hours childcare 8-6.

So really the cost is £12000.

Post tax, post commuting and other work costs.

No wonder so many women gave to quit work if they can't get free childcare from gps.

I don't understand why childcare needs to be affordable?

I mean a nice house might be desirable but that doesn't automatically mean it should be affordable.

The going rate for full time childcare seems to be around 20K per year. So that is what having a child costs you. You either pay it by having a SAHP, or you work and pay it to someone else.

If the job you do is worth more to society than 20K per year then this will work, if not then you can't do it.

Why do people feel there is an intrinsic right to have a child then not take the full financial hit for it?

Ridiculous quotes, to keep my full time job I pay £15000 a year in London... why do they quote part-time? Many full timers in my daughter's nursery.

We're paying more than that for 3 days per week!

My FT childcare costs me just under £32k per annum out of our post tax income for two children in Zone 3 London. I employ a full-time nanny and pay full NI etc. If I used a nursery it would cost me £33,600 for the same hours.

Nanny employers cannot claim back statutory sick pay, and I need to cover 6 weeks at 90% pay for maternity pay this year on top of the cost of another nanny before SMP kicks in. [I am v pleased for her but it's nearly another £3k to find]

£6k is a frickin' joke.

The government [and all previous governments] does what is sensible and uses the lowest possible benchmark it can rather than admit it can't possibly fund it to a reasonable level. Govt funding for everything is a finite pot of money so either something has to be cut to fund the difference, or the pay-off has got to be millions in tax revenue from parents going back to work offsetting the cost.

I idly wonder if free early years childcare funding was increased to full-time hours but 40-50 hrs pw was only available to working parents, [the current allowance remaining static effectively facilitating only nursery provision] would it materially increase the numbers of parents going back to work and thus tax revenues?

If you could access 40-50 hrs a week [8-6] free childcare in a state sponsored and regulated environment, do you think you could get a 4-5 day a week full-time job ?

We pay £880 a month for two kids at a lovely CM, four days a week. Plus they each get 15 hours a week free playgroup and nursery hours respectively.
I consider that a fair cost, and I know our CM earns about NMW despite working 10 hour days in a job I know I'd never have the patience for!

Why have costs risen so much on average, are they all paying a minimum of the Living Wage, and when will Miliband threaten State controls to get them back in line to ensure that this market works for the workers?

Just think how much they'd be now, if from 2010 all their taxes/business costs would have gone UP. Just a thought.

We pay £55 / day in Hampshire. That's only £5.50 a hour as nursery is open 8-6 - I can't think of anything else I pay for that is such a low hourly rate. Dentist, hairdresser, beautician, oven cleaning - admittedly they are very infrequent but they are generally 10x what nursery charge.

I think any help has to come from Govt (although what would pay for it I don't know) - I don't think childcare providers are overcharging.

The working out of the figure is laughable, it considers a part time place I assume - our full time childcare place (North west) is just under 1k a month. So double it.

We pay around £11k per year for Childcare. It's less than that now as DD gets the 15 hours funding but a full time place works out a £236 a week, in Birmingham. Interestingly, our nursery gives a discount for full time making 4 days more or less the same price.

There's no point quoting the part time cost as it doesn't take into account costs like lost wages for those additional hours, or put a cost on family childcare etc.

We’ve had to wait until DD is school age to have another child as we simply could not afford to have two children in childcare and I am not prepared to give up work (nor could we afford to lose my good salary long term). To even have two children in nursery 3 days a week would cost more than my well above salary.

GBP6k a year doesn't even touch the sides. If we lived in the UK cost 4 years ago was GBP1200 a month per child for a FT place... in Manchester area. I have two DC 18 months apart. I would be looking at GBP2400 a month for the first year. GBP6k per year - hahahahaha.

I find the fact that they published part time numbers to be insulting. So as a parent I am expected to work part time? Why? So my DH can get further ahead in his career while mine dies a slow death. Don't talk to me about quota's on boards until we have some action on the childcare front Davie boy. Oh yeah thats right, your wife has a seat on a board because her mummy owns the company. The institutional sexism is hard to take.

trilby I think similarly to you and I have similar costs (I realise some places cost much more).

I also see the problems and I think it is hard to reconcile. We use a childminder at the moment which is £45/day. The CM is great and we feel that she provides a great service. However on a full time basis that would be around £11k; with the 15 hours funding at 3yo, that would still be around £9k. That is a huge amount of money.

Some people might get childcare vouchers, or earlier funding, but that only accounts for part of the bill; by and large it's just incredibly expensive to use childcare when compared with one's earnings. I don't think lowering the cost of childcare is the answer as I don't think we're being overcharged for what we get. Something has to give somewhere.

I also think 15 hours of funding in term time is a bit of an odd amount. I understand that it is usually equivalent to morning or afternoon sessions in a nursery class, but most parents in need of childcare due to work won't be using it that way.

As usual the report's findings confirm things I found out for myself some time ago... being on median wage the childcare costs for two children meant it wasn't worth me staying in work.

In answer to IceBeing, I wouldn't mind the necessity so much if: 1) it wasn't just me giving up my job (which I loved), my dh could cut some of his hours too. Unfortunately he asked about that and his employer was not enthusiastic to say the least. Also why is it usual and acceptable for women to work part-time, but not men, why are traditional male professions paid more than traditional female professions, etc, why does the burden fall on women in short. 2) My time spent as a childminder at home was actually recognised as a useful contribution to society (unpaid caring work has been estimated at 20-30% of gdp) and pension rights and ni contributions therfore were unaffected and 3) It wasn't so difficult to get back into the jobmarket afterwards. For goodness sake a 3 (or 4) year absence out of an expected 50-55 year working life does not turn me into a mindless cretin, I am perfectly capable of picking up where I left off. Plus of course all the 1) points continue to apply when children are at school.

I notice that Finland allows, has the capability to allow, parents to stay at home with their children, funded, until the children are 3, and still walk back into their old job at the end of it. It works for them. If they can do that why can't we? Britain is a richer country by gdp than finland so don't try to tell me we can't afford it. Consider the waste of talent, ability and funded education to society by forcing women, the higher educational achievers, into crappy part-time jobs for the rest of their lives after kids in your answer.

If women are more likely to be 'allowed' to go part time then men, then it is sexism straight up. The source of the problem should be fixed not the symptoms stick plastered...

But then my DH is a SAHD. So I guess I often fail to see getting SAHP as a feminist issue.