Hi everyone. I am having some serious issues with my daughters current nursery and I'm just looking to see if anyone is able to shed some light on things for me, because they are not communicating at all.
Since September my daughter has received the 15 hours two year old funding. When I started this I asked for the stretched funding as I work throughout the year - they said this was fine and works out at about 11 hours a week through the year and funding can only be used on a 10 hour day (8-6). So in my mind this means she was to be receiving a funded day per week, for which they charge a slight charge to top up the gov funding as this doesn't actually pay for their costs, which I understand and am fine with. I assumed the extra 1 hour a week was just disregarded and lost which I was fine with.
They sent out a notice at the start of March that their fees would be increasing and that her new monthly payment would be £1350 including the funded day each week. This is wildly unaffordable for me as it's over my wage each month, so I asked if I could reduce her hours to three days per week (2 x paid sessions and 1 x funded session) which was agreed and I was advised would cost £621 per month.
When I received our first invoice for the reduced hours it was £780 and showed that the funding she receives has dropped from 47.5 hours a month to 27.6. When I questioned this they said that's the way stretched hours worked and that because I had changed her hours I was no longer entitled to the same funding each week and that they had over allocated funding and now there was a shortfall in what I had paid vs the childcare she'd recieved.
Because I was told the wrong monthly price and I disagreed with the expectation to pay this new amount each month on what appeared to be their error (going off the fact they said they over allocated her funding) I asked to remove her and have applied for a new place elsewhere (much cheaper!). They agreed and sent a bill for £730 for the month of April (three short days per week, one funded). I pointed out that my agreement was that she would only attend the first week of April with her last day being 7th, so they reissued the invoice to show just the first week... Somehow this new invoice has come out at £790?
They just keep telling me that because I stretched her hours, now that I'm taking her out part way through the year I now have to pay for hours that previously they hadn't invoiced me for. After a lot of back and forth with no one giving me an actual answer and the administrator refusing to speak with ms...They've finally sent me a breakdown of the cost to explain what's happened but I simply do not understand it. She's attended for 32 weeks since September, which has been worked out at 36 funded sessions (presumably 36x10 hours =360 hours) and 121 paid sessions. These (plus a couple months of early starts back in September - December due to my shift pattern) has worked out to be £8591 yet they've only ever invoiced me for £7801.10 and are now expecting me to pay the additional £789.90 that they haven't invoiced for.
I keep questioning why they never invoiced me for this amoun, and they just keep saying that because her hours were stretched this is how they work out the invoices and that this amount was previously spread over the invoices for the full year and would have been a smaller additional amount each month (I worked out the actual cost of her childcare each month with their new fees and it worked out to be only £1200 so the figure they sent me of £1350 so assuming that this extra money I somehow owe has just been spread over these invoices too without telling me) but because she is leaving they now want it as a lump sum.
I guess what om asking is - is this normal? Is it normal for funding to somehow mean you pay less over the year but then if you leave part way through you end up with a massive bill??? I just feel like I've been screwed over somewhere but I can't really put my finger on it.
I have no problem paying for what's been used but I just don't get why they under invoiced me for so long and have now just dumped this on me initially with zero explanation. Even their explanation that I've forced out of them doesn't seem to add up?