Food fee’s at Nursery

[Sassy31]

Out of interest was speaking to a mum friend who’s 2 kids are in Nusery just outside London, but not to far out. I’m in a inner city London nursery. So, she has to pay 20 quid a day per child on there food and this includes bank holidays. Now I only pay 3 quid a day! And I don’t have to pay when DD is not in, which includes holiday & bank holiday and sickness providing we’ve called in before 10 So is this the norm to charge working mother’s for bank holiday to feed children there clearly not feeding. I’m really shocked. Seems incredibly unfair and a way of making money for nothing! Thoughts?

Unfortunately its not really about the food. The nursery will typically be getting paid around £4 per hour for every funded 3 year old and if they are in an expensive area to be in business they may well have a normal hourly rate of £6 to £8 an hour so by taking funded children they are being forced out of business or have to charge for extras. businees rates, taxes, wages (which are going up in April) have to be paid regardless of if its bank holiday or the child is sick

Our LA doesn’t allow us to apply sundry charges for funded places on a bank holiday.

I doubt they are charging £20 for food, that's incorrect . £20 will be the top up to the funded hours and will include food.

That’s what I thought . But they actually said it’s for the food as per the terms & conditions and they charge on the B Hols . Which seems rather unfair when your paying for two kids & with a double bank holiday coming up.
How should she broach the subject? Currently there only attending 2 days per wk. Anymore and i would imagine it would work out rather unaffordable. Even with the free hours.

They are finding a way to cover the high overall costs of running a childcare business. Sure, they could drop the bank holiday fee, but still have to find the money from somewhere. So the answer would be to stop charging for bank holidays and charge a little more the rest of the time. They can’t just magic these costs away.