Nursery fees

[Smurf2019]

Good afternoon lovely people,

Looking for a bit of advice please

Our little boy has attended nursery for the past 2 and half years, However in recent months we have been having a few problems, our little man started to get the entitlement to the 30 hours free childcare in September and since then we have been charged a "premium" package fee for his attendance and being charged £1.80 per hour that he attends for 22 hours as his hours are split over 51 weeks of the year.

This premium package fee according the nursery is to cover all snacks, lunches and extra curricular activities.

My question is I believe this charge is meant to be voluntary and if we would like to supply our little one with lunch etc then we should be entitled to do that? However nursery state that no food or drink shall be brought in from home.

We already pay the nursery for the 8 hours he doesn't get funding which comes in at £224.70 per month.

this premium package for the food and drink etc comes in at £171.60 per month.

This makes our total invoice for the month with the 30 hours free childcare at £396.30.

Is this reasonable ? - I don't mind paying for food for him to attend as it does make our lives easier but paying nearly £40 a week for just snacks and lunches seems a stupidly high amount.

(I know nurseries are struggling but so are we and finding this amount every month is just really hard).

1.80 AN HOUR?! for snacks and lunch?! No. 1.80 a day for snacks and lunch would be more acceptable. I'd ask how you become a non premium customer🤷‍♀️

Thank you. I thought I was going mad! Seems like it’s the only package they offer as don’t accept food and drink from home because of “allergies”

I work in a nursery.
We don't call the government hours free we call them subsidised.
The government pay less than £5 per hour for the free hours.
The youngest members of staff we employ are paid £9 an hour.
We charged a £10 a day tip up for free hours.
Parents know this and are happy with it

I think for some nurseries it’s either that or shutting down… I know which one I’d prefer.

The government should up the hourly rate and compensate by probably upping the threshold or create tiers for eligibility.

Thank you.

yes I know what you mean it’s very under funded.

however I feel £1.80 an hour is quite a lot. If it was a set amount of as you said £10 a day it wouldn’t be so bad.

My problem isn’t with them charging a fee. It’s with how much the fee is and not being given the option to supply own food.

maybe a set fee a day would be slightly better than basing it on hours.

Blame the government. The £1.80 plus the government allowance probably just covers the costs for a 3yo.

Yes I see the point but £13.20 a day for food is quite a substantial amount.

I get that we have to subsidise the government funding which is wrong and more help should be given to nurseries.

Its not for food. They just say it is as thats one of the few things they can charge for.
Obviously they provide food in with it, but its also paying wages and the electricity bill and for the cleaner...

As well as providing the food, they're also supplying the staff to care fir the children and look after them over lunch times. If you provided your son's food then he would still need to be looked after whilst he is eating.

That does seem like a lot of money though to pay as extra. The government don't pay nurseries anywhere near enough and because nurseries can set their own 'extra' fees, people are confused.

Also, there should be a new campaign that reminds people that the hours are funded/subsidised and not free. That way people don't get a shock when their child turns three and they're still paying a lot of money in childcare.

If you work out what hourly rate you were paying before the funded hours, you might find the £1.80 an hour is the shortfall. Have you asked the nursery?

For*

Following if that's OP.

No advice as we are not there yet. My child is nearly 2 and we pay for nursery but I'm interested in the "free" hours from age 3 as we initially thought we'd get 30 hours and so our nursery bill will be cut by 3/4 (currently do 40 hours) but it sounds like this is not the case!

Right. Except they're not allowed to do that

Well then the government should fund it properly. Because the alternative is settings go bust and you'll soon find there's no places available for you to use your 'free' hours and the remaining settings won't even accept the funding.

Multiple all this by a million as we look at the proposed funded hours from 9 months old and you can see a sector that will only fall further in to crisis.

The government leaves the nursery with a shortfall and if they didn't charge somewhere they would go out of business.

The entire problem is the phrase free childcare. It's not. It's subsidised.

The nursery are trying to keep going hence the charges.

Lunch and dinner at our nursery is £3 per meal. Breakfast and snacks are included. So £6 per day. They also charge for sun cream (£1 a month in the summer months).

I understand why they have to do it, but that seems steep. Its really tough, i wouldnt want to pay that much once they are eligible for 30 free hours but if you want the nursery to be able to provide the provision then it costs what it costs. By contrast, we pay £95 per month on top of the 30 free hours, to cover lunch, snacks and the time covered during the lunch period.

Would a school nursery or one attached to a sure start centre be more reasonably priced? Although appreciate you may not want to move him before primary school.

The ban on food from home may well be that they will save no money by your little one doing this but will miss the income.

My son get 30 hours free. He attends 30 hours a week but all year round so 22 hours free a week.

I still pay £316.20 a month which is the 8 hours and food ect.

It's 30 hours if term time only. If all year then it works out as 22hrs ish depending on how your nursery do it if attending a private nursery. Our nursery bill cut by just over half (£700 once we had the govt 20% scheme to £300)

OP that sounds pretty similar to what we pay - snacks and food plus trips for us works out about £11 a day on funded days. Ours is split between sundries and food.
Tbh they don't pay nurseries enough per child and if the choice is paying it or the nursery closing I know what I would choose!

Ours is £17.90 per day for a fully funded day, so this is practically the same.

The thing is you can refuse to pay these costs but it is likely you will just lose your place. The nurseries simply can't run on the government funding and there is a nationwide shortage of childcare so someone will soon take your place. If everyone refuses to pay top up then even more childcare places will close and people will be left with no childcare options. It's only going to get worse when the government bring in their new funding for even younger kids.

They should be billing you for food and your other 8 hours. It will work out the same, but they can't bill you per hour.