ADVICE ABOUT INVOICE/FUNDING (SCOTLAND)

[lilmissgalaxy]

Hello

I currently have a little girl who attends nursery and received her funded place in January due to her birthday being in September.
Anyway I seem to be having an issue with the invoicing and I am not sure if they are invoicing me correctly and have tried to raise the concern with them since January but have been pied on every occassion thus leading to a massive £800 bill as I aint paying nothing till they sort it as they do not issue refunds.
Anyway my little girl is in nursery a Tuesday 9-4.10 (9-12.10 1-4.10 and we pay the £9 for between 12 and 1) Wednesday 9-4.10 and a friday morning 9-12.10.
She is not in any extra at all and this is still costing us £172.50 just this month! Thats for only 2 weeks as its the Easter holidays!! our nursery grant added up to £85. So does the grant only cover a certain % of the costs? I thought you got 16 hours free then pay any extra.

Can i add that both me and my partner work fulltime, him through the day 7am-5pm and myself nightshifts 3 times a week 8pm-8am. My mum has her on the odd day between 7am and 8am with me and my partners work so we dont have to pay any extra.

But does this sound right to anyone? As if it is I may have to take her out of nursery all together which I DO NOT want to do as she does benefit from going and i enjoy a sleep after doing a nightshift.

ANY ADVICE APPRECIATED!!

Only their finance person can help you really. It could be that their funded sessions are only at certain times. It could be they're charging for certain activities.

Make sure you have it in writing (an email trail or something) that you are querying the bill, or you might get charged late payment fees too.

Is it a private nursery or a preschool attached to the school? If it's private then they can charge extra, they should be telling you how they calculate it though. It seems a lot given that's she's basically just doing the funded hours (I presume she's term time only). One attached to a school would usually be completely funded apart, apart from that 1 lunchtime.

It's difficult as they all do their fees differently and offset the funding differently. Our invoices shows the full fees for the month and then the funded amount shows as a discount. We used the full funded hours.and our "discount" was about £116 per month. They may still be charging for snacks, lunch activities etc so I'd ask them to detail it all.

I know that some nurseries don't deduct the funded.portion monthly and instead give you it in a lump sum at certain points throughout the year when they receive the funds from the council.

The nursery is correct I’m afraid. They receive money from your LA which might be roughly £3ph for your child which they deduct from their actual hourly rate.

Usually private nurseries charge around £5per hour

I’m surprised they have allowed you to continue with three months unpaid invoices!

In my nursery you would be excluded if you hadn't paid your fees after a month, and we would be taking you to court to recover the fees, so I'm surprised the nursery are still letting you attend
What time are the sessions as I've never known a nursery close at 10 past the hour