'Voluntary' payments

[Pierrette]

My 3-year old daughter attends a privately owned nursery 4 mornings a week. This should be free, since we are entitled to government funding (she only does 12 hours out of the 15-hour allowance). However, we have been presented with an invoice 2 terms running for around £250 - a so called 'voluntary' contribution, though we are made to feel we need to pay it, since the nursery would be unable to run effectively otherwise. Is this normal?! I was not made aware of this when registering her, and we are struggling to afford the amount.

IIRC the govt funding is so many hours at so much an hour, not "X free sessions" or "X free hours"

it is usual for nurseries to charge a top up fee where their rates are higher than the govt will pay, and i have never known it called "voluntary"

the govt money is like a voucher that covers MOST but not ALL of a session

however, you should have known all about this up front - some nurseries charge a small fee for sancktime etc too

Ive just answered this (youve posted twice) but have you spoken to the local council early years team. They are the people who will know!

Ashamed - it doesn't work like that anymore. The free hours are just that- 15 hours of free care and top up fees are not allowed to be charged. Most of the time the funding is not as much as the nursery would usually charged (voucher amounts are set by the LA) and this will be why the nursery are calling them voluntary because they cannot enforce the charge to you.

thanks for correcting me NN, can you tell Ds is at big school now