15 hrs free nursery - how much is it worth?

[PuffPants]

Does anybody know how much the 15 hrs is worth? I'm looking at private nurseries and just wondered how much I'm likely to get off the cost. The ones I've looked at do generally seem to accept it but are a bit vague about it.

Thanks.

We are in Herts and DS attends a chain nursery. The funding is worth about £9 per session, so £45 per week deducted from the bill. The max no of sessions you can take is 2 per day, so you have to attend for 2.5 days per week to fully use the funding.

Meant to say - funding is term time only, so they only deduct the funding sum in term time. Makes the bills unequal and a bit hard to predict sometimes.

The funding should be worked out on the nursery's hourly fees and they are not allowed to charge you top up fees if the amount they get from the council does not cover their hourly rate.

More information here - www.childcaredirectory.co.uk/funding3-4.htm

Ours was spread over the year so worked out about 11 hours a week which was two sessions for us (10hours)

Its not meant to have a financial value, its supposed to be free hours.

BUT.. having said that, I've used 2 nurseries (with different DC) where the funding they receive from the LEA is simply passed on to me - there is no deduction to the amount I have to pay, so I still pay full fees throughout the year and then at 3 points during the year (i.e. when the nursery gets my child's funding from the LEA each term) they simply give me a cheque for the amount they get. Each term is slightly different (as the number of weeks in each term varies) but its usually £500-600 (each term).

In our area, its £4 per hour. Pre-school (charity) asks for a donation of about £2ph on top of that but its made fairly clear that you need to pay it; nursery (private) charges a "sundries" fee which magically happens to be the same amount as the difference between their usual hourly rate & the amount they receive from the council.

Hi,

Private nurseries are not allowed to charge top up fees!
You get your free hours per week, however note that during school holidays you would not get these hours (holidays).

Private nurseries are NOT ALLOWED to charge top up fees! Unless you take some more days at nursery in addition to your free hours.