Help!! I haven’t made enough money to meet childcare requirements

[SackJellington]

So 1 DC in nursery. I started my business last year and had 12 months at 30 free hours. In January when I submit my accounts it will be clear I haven’t made enough money as my 12 months will be up.

So what happens? They say there is a grace period. How long is it? When will I get cut down to 15 hours? I am not complaining, I get why this has happened, just trying to get an idea of what will happen going forward.

I’m such a failure. I don’t think we will be able to afford the extra hours so DC will have to scale back potentially which will be tricky. I am looking for alternative work now as I have to accept my business has failed.

Out of interest what is the line of work?

Then don’t. I don’t care if you don’t believe me. I’ve had some support and the answers I needed.

And no they don’t, they usually take a mixture of smaller jobs I guess, then as they get bigger they do the bigger ones. As I said, I was stupid because I dropped all the r smaller ones for this one big one. That was a huge mistakes

Im devastated by all this, I don’t need your lack of understanding and petty judgement.

I’ve answered this up thread, I’m not going to say, sorry.

You should have been given a start date, end date and grace period end date when you last reconfirmed.
Did you get an email at the time?

Once you know your grace period, you will know when your funding will end.

As a pp has said if you can't find it, ask the nursery to check your code on their portal and they can tell you.

Hi OP, there are a lot of posters on this thread who are giving very poor advice based on guesses as to how the policy works.

As others have said, for the first 12 months of a new business, the earnings criteria don’t apply. After that, a grace period applies - there are more details re for how long at the bottom of this: https://www.familycorner.co.uk/free-childcare-and-early-education-guide-parents-and-carers

It may be worth calling this HMRC childcare helpline if you’re still not sure: 0300 123 4097

Best of luck x

I would ring your councils early years department. Mine were really helpful and explained it all. I couldnt claim the 30 hours free as im self employed and wasn’t making enough money due to being ill.
Businesses are always up and down, it’s the nature of the game, even the huge trans nationals have issues at times
You could drop to the 15 hours. If you go to a school nursery or preschool that does term time school hours you’ll get 2.5 days a week.

@SackJellington I'm going to tell you off too. Please don't call yourself stupid and all these other things. As the people in the know above say, most businesses fail at the beginning. Many don't make any money for a bit. The ones that go on to succeed often fail a few times first. It takes resilience and belief and sticking with things and yes, learning from failures, to make things happen and get to where you want to be.

You are not just NOT stupid, but you went for it. I wish I was as brave. I admire people like you. What a brilliant role model you are for your kids too. Like the other poster above said, I salute you. Just because some nasty keyboard warriors on here want to stick the boot in, don't let them corrode your confidence or put you off going for it again either now or in the future, with the new-found knowledge and experience you now have and can learn from. You weren't stupid, just inexperienced. How can anyone gain that experience except through doing? I'd say if you love what you do and you know you are good at it, don't give up but think through what happened and rejig the way you operate to minimise it happening again. The person above who said to take advantage of any orgs and free courses available also had good advice. Some things are just unavoidable and I know people in creative industries, and other industries also, absolutely shafted through no fault of their own. Not everything can be foreseen.

I know little about the childcare aspects here, but I hate the way a woman doing something different, taking a calculated risk and going for something that seemed promising has been so castigated by some truly unpleasant posts on here.

I hope you recover your confidence and stand up and back yourself.

Haven't RTFT as it looked like it was turning into a trollfest, but make sure you phone them to explain and ask advice BEFORE you reconfirm. Different situation (husband on 0 hours contract didn't meet the quarterly threshold) but the lady explained its ultimately based on annual income, so even if he wasn't meeting that quarter, reconfirm to say we expect the income and try to make it up over the rest of the tax year. If your income is for 24/25, you've still got time to make it up. I don't know how it works for self employed, but they were really helpful on the phone. The lady also said not to worry about clawback and basically they were very understanding.

Thank you SO much to the last few posters who have been kind and helpful. I’m going to ring the helpline and let them know and then go from there.

I am so deflated because I really thought I’d found myself. I’ve been a bit lost and this felt so right; something I’m good at and I could be my own boss! But I feel like I’ve gotten it all wrong. My DH has been great and thankfully he has earned just enough to keep us going but I am gutted that I’ve wasted time and lost us money when I could have been working for someone else and bringing in a. Steady income.

I totally get what you mean @carrotsfortea as I did feel proud that I’d finally taken a risk and it was working out, I know lots of men who’ve gone self employed and smashed their businesses, Inguess I just couldn’t make it work. I’m so annoyed that I’ve been so daft as to focus on one thing. I will keep doing it in my spare time but do smaller projects and see how it goes for the future. This thread has upset me because I KNOW all the bad stuff, I’m living it! I have ADHD and forms and such really confuse me, the whole childcare thing has been difficult to get my head around which is why I wanted to ask for clarity here so I could understand what happens now. No amount of telling me how terrible it was and how rubbish £1000 is could make me feel any worse as it’s my own life! I just wanted clarity as I don’t want to mess my DC around on top of everything else. But it’ll be nice to spend more time together before school starts. Thank you. X

£1000 a month or £1000 for the whole year? If it's the latter then surely you will have known a lot sooner that the business what not profitable and done something else. Why wait for the whole year?

No because she was expecting to get £10000 at the end of the project.

I think it’s great you took the risk! Most people (me included) live within their comfort zones and never even try, so even though it didn’t end how you wanted I admire how ballsy you were to give it a go in the first place.

So I had very similar circumstances. In late June 22 I confirmed our family circumstances (both parents earning), got the code, and passed it to our childcare provider.

In August 22 I had slightly devastating news that new funding I was relying on had fallen through, and I actually had no funding and thus no income from September. I was frantic - I needed to reconfirm the code in September. I emailed our childcare provider explaining that I would meet the annual minimum threshold (I had already done so by the end of August), I just couldn't falsely declare the gov.uk website that I was working. The nursery immediately applied a grace period until the end of December. It was v stressful but by December I had received additional funding to declare it again and to get another code.

They did say that from January I would be liable for top-up fees if I didn't the code, but luckily that didn't happen. They told me they could apply the grace period for one term (school nursery). I'm not sure if that depends on your LA too. Good luck!

Every code has a grace period date on it.
It's not the nursery that decided to apply it, the date is given by HMRC when they issue the code.
The rules are that as long as you start claiming the hours before the end date of the code the grace period will then come into effect to give the parent a chance to get back into work before the funding stops.

were you working before you went self employed?
or a SAHM?

If you need to next renew your code in September your code will not be renewed six months later. You will be ok renewing in December as it's before January. When you try to renew again in March it won't work. That means you grace period will end on August 31st 2025.

Yes they will, the December code won't expire until March. Then when that code expires you have the grace period.

you have been working 30 hours a week for the last 9 months and not billed a penny.

Now it’s been withdrawn,

i can’t get my head around this

Hi, did you ever find this out? I’m in the EXACT same position and so stuck on what to do! Ps. You’re not a failure! It’s so hard starting and growing a new business and being a mum too!