Has anyone successfully challenged their nursery over charging top up fees with early years funding?

[bangersmashandbeans]

Just that really! Mine have told me in an email they charge top up fees but state that in the bill it will be shown as the cost for the compulsory fourth hour per day so it is therefore allowable. Has anyone any experience in successfully challenging such a situation?

I doubt whether your nursery was breaking any rules, Pinkprincess.

Nurseries are allowed to define 'funded sessions' based around set times which are free of charge to the parents. You pay for the extra non-funded hours as an additional service. This is not a top-up fee.

The nursery must be able to demonstrate those hours are provided free of charge and that they are offering the funded hours on a 'no strings' basis. They should show the hours deducted from the bill, rather than deducting a cash amount.

You must have the option to take up only the free hours and not pay anything. Note that the nursery has no obligation to offer free sessions that fit your work or other commitments, so you can’t argue you’ve been 'forced' to pay for particular hours because of your working hours, etc.

Ultimately you were getting a full day’s childcare for £14 (which wouldn’t buy 20 minutes of dog walking where I live.) Meanwhile, the nursery was struggling to balance the books due to being seriously underpaid by the government for delivering those 'free' hours.

Itsaboojum - oh I do think it's more the governments fat if they only funded £2.50 per hour as that couldn't be enough even 5 years ago. Our nursery was cheap even for this area at £29 per day (most were £32/£35 a day). There wasn't an option to be totally free I don't think as their sessions were 7.30-12.30 and 12.30-5pm and the bill never reflected 'free hours' just 12x£2.50 for however many term weeks were in that calendar month.

I was probably lucky I was able to be given 12 hrs funding in two days and it did reduce our bill in term time. The only other options would be a school nursery for 3 he sessions then childminder/wrap around nursery care which would work out as much as a full day.

This is a very old thread and the circumstances and rules around top ups has changed.

The funding now does not cover fees for the majority of settings and they are now allowed to charge for extras to cover the shortfall.

An old thread, but a current issue nontheless.

Some rules have changed, indeed, but not to the point where top-up fees are permitted. My local authority funding Provider Agreement reads "The Provider cannot charge parents 'top-up' fees(the difference between a provider's usual fee and the amount they receive from the local authority to deliver funded places) or require parents to pay a registration fee as a condition of taking up their child's funded place."

Funding levels have never truly been high enough, because childcare fees have never truly been high enough to support private sector childcare providers in any long term sense. The real crisis point came with the 2015 general election con-trick of increasingly to 30 'free' hours without sufficient money to pay for it.

Since then, successive Children’s Ministers have deviously insisted nurseries must act within the rules whilst "finding creative ways" to raise the shortfall needed to stay in business.

Councils have two jobs one to administer the funding and make sure rules are followed and the other to work to ensure enough spaces are available. Because funding is less than the actual cost of childcare too many settings are closing - exactly what was predicted by the sector and ignored by the government in its vote winning strategy, so now councils are being forced to come up with ways around the funding problem and support the settings. Complaining and taking it further may help everyone as the government may have to review the money they have allocated to the scheme to it may force children into higher ratio classes at an earlier and earlier age as there will be no option send children to school even younger.
I can see a day where we go from maternity leave to school see you at 18 when I drop you to Uni. No real social development just institutionalised children. School from 7am to 6pm 5 days a week age 1.

I suspect it would very much suit governments to force children into school earlier. They seem to have an agenda to create a compliant, dumbed-down population of worker-consumers ruled by institutions.

I’m not sure that complaining about individual nurseries is the way to make change happen. Such complaints will only have two outcomes. Local authorities' first step is to 'coach' the nursery’s management: essentially, they show them how to stay within the rules whilst still charging parents the same amount by other means, or shift the burden to non-funded children (anybody fancy double fees for the under-3's, for example?) It could ultimately in nurseries being refused funding, in which case parents lose out and/or that particular nursery loses business and eventually closes.

None of this puts any pressure on central government to fix a system that was clearly already eve, but before he political parties turned the 2015 general election into a bidding war for fools who were prepared to sell their vote in exchange for an empty promise of under-funded 'free' childcare.

The government has already got its quid pro quo for this ridiculous policy, and is very happy for childcare providers to take the unpleasant consequences whilst spinning how "successful" it has been.

IMHO the only way providers could put pressure on government would be if they all organised a mass boycott of the scheme. But that’s not likely to happen. Providersreally don’t want to hurt families, not even in the short term; also, some nurseries would lose too much business if they boycotted the scheme whilst other local nurseries participated.