£75 Admin fee for 30 hours free childcare?

[flashbac]

Is this allowed? Only going to be sending DD for one day a week so it seems extortionate.

Absolutely not! I never paid a penny. This needs reporting

As a one off? Daily? Weekly? Monthly?

I don't think there are rules around what admin charges nurseries can charge, but I don't know for certain. They're not allowed to ask you to (directly) supplement the hourly rate for the free hours, but a registration fee is presumably for them to decide.

If a one off registration fee - all nurseries have them whether accessing free hours or not.
An ongoing fee to access free hours - I would look for another nursery

To who? It’s a private nursery…they can charge what they want

One off they say. I just didn't expect to have to pay that much to access the free hours.

That sounds pretty standard for a private nursery

I’ve had to pay £100 deposit to hold the place at nursery. Fairly standard to stop people putting their names down for lots of nurseries I think and to show you’re serious about the space. If all you’re being asked to pay is £75 as a one off you’re doing very well.

Standard, it's £100 here

Yeah it's pretty standard, when my son first started nursery a couple of years ago it was only for one day a week but still had to pay around £250 for deposit/registration fee/admin fee.

You’re not paying £75 to ‘access the free hours’, you are paying to secure his place at a nursery.

They shouldn’t be calling them free hours at all, anyway. They are only partially funded by the government. It’s up to the nursery to provide them (some in affluent areas don’t bother)

It will depend on the funding agreement the nursery will have signed with their Local Authority.
Some might allow this but others won't.
If you want to check, contact your local authority.

Either pay or find another nursery

@Kitkat1523 I know for a fact that they are NOT allowed to charge to access the free childcare as the first nursery I found for my DD tried to charge £115! I took her elsewhere but my local council later fined them once they found out they'd been charging everyone it to access the hours. I think they were also prosecuted and they too were a private nursery attached to a girls school.

(This was in 2015 though)

.......

So no OP, they cannot!

Well more fool that nursery for calling it that…..most just call if a holding fee….it’s very normal

That isn't the official guidance. That looks like an article written of someone's interpretation if them.

The clue is in the words 'should not' instead of 'must not'. This is key when writing your funding policy.

The nursery my DC went to stop offering the ‘free ‘ because of all the hassle and the low rate
It was by far the best nursery in the area so was still full

The problem when someone does this is that the nursery simply stops offering free hours or makes them extremely restricted. DC’s nursery had just 2 places for children on just free hours - they were only available for 5 hours on 3 days of the week which were in the afternoon and in term time. They carefully chose them in such a way that the child wouldn’t benefit from all the other extras parents were paying hundreds for. These restrictions were the direct impact of a similar fine at another local nursery.

There is fault on both sides as there are some unscrupulous nursery owners who are all about the money but equally the free hours do not come close to covering the costs. They can’t sustain a business without charging top ups so they need to be creative in how they do it.

The government need to fund it properly then be strict on rules