"Free" nursery places

[Bear56]

My daughter is entitled to 15 hours free education for her 2 year old son, but none of the nurseries near us will allow you to just have the free hours.they all insist on you buying at least as many hours. My daughter doesn't work and cannot afford the extra hours, so her son Is missing out.
Are they allowed to do this?
Council website is rubbish and doesn't answer this.

No they are not allowed. There should be no extra fees

Agreed. They are not allowed to insist on extra hours.

They cant insist on that. However they can say their sessions are four hours long, minimum, so dc can either go 4 x 4 and pay for one, or 3 x 4 and miss out on three hours.

Of course, they then charge an extortionate amount for the one single hour.

Has she looked for a CM?

Should she try nurseries attached to primary schools instead of private nurseries?

I think private nurseries can but there will be state (school) nurseries or preschools too.

Some childminders also offer the free 2 year funding.

Do they have to be 3 to start preschool though ?

And yes if it's not for childcare reasons but more for him to experience nursery then could she just send him 2 sessions a week for example so he wouldn't use all his free hours but it would also mean he wouldn't go slightly over and they then charge a fortune for the extra ?

Thanks for your messages, but the nurseries are definitely saying no free hours without buying a bigger package. I will try to speak to someone at the council. Good suggestion to just use some hours though, e.g. Two or three four hour sessions.

I manage a preschool and we take children from 2. We also offer just the funded hours too with no expectation to buy more hours. More hours are available as we are open 8-6 all year round
I would avoid a nursery that makes it hard to access the funded hours. There are nurseries that don't really want funded 2 year olds
Most preschools do take children from 2 but some limit the number of funded children they take
We don't. We built an extension so we could take more

I work in a private pre school, as with insancerre we also offer just funded hours with no expectation to buy no more hours.
We also take children from 2yrs up to 5yrs.
We however are 9-3.

I have read this with interest. My grandson is entitled to 15 hours but the nursery will only allow him to have morning sessions under the free entitlement if he is to stay all day he afternoon is not funded. As they live in a rural area and have no car getting him there is an hours travel! I cannot believe that this is legal?

As far as I know as long as the nursery offers 15 free hours then they can choose which free hours they offer on which day. The nursery Dd and ds went offered either 5 morning sessions or 5 afternoon settings, not a mix of each