Nursery fees question

[RosaStar]

i am currently on maternity leave and we have a two year old who we put in nursery for 2 days a week. We are using the free 15 hours childcare but the full two days is 20 hours. No nursery near us offers part time. This is coming to roughly £550 a month. (We are in London). Does this seem right? It’s becoming quite hard to pay as my mat pay has dropped. Are there any other entitlements or support to help overall when you’re on mat leave? Like reduced council tax or anything? Our council tax is over £200 and our mortgage fees are super high. We’re struggling at the end of each month. I don’t want to take my son out as he loves it and we know it’s good for him. I’ll be going back to work on December as cannot afford to drop to the stat mat pay only. Any ideas or suggestions welcome.

Are you using 15 hours a week in term time or have you/the nursery spread it over the school holidays so that it is about 11h a week year round?

Your mortgage provider may allow you to take a short holiday/interest only period. We did this years ago when I was on mat leave, but it may not be universal.

Will the nursery allow one day only or half day sessions?

Are you using your tax free childcare?

Yes, good point @TickingAlongNicely. @RosaStar you don’t mention tax free childcare, which is in addition to the free hours.

Is your dc in nursery the full year or term time only because the subsidy is term time only (nurseries will split it across the year to help parents. Thus means you will be paying for 9 hours per week, still seems a lot but there may be a lunch charge etc too

Ours would be the same, but tax free childcare reduces it a bit.

Two full days or four sessions is the minimum weekly booking here, and they don’t do part time/school hours.

Ironically, with all the funded hours subsidies and the like, we don’t save much with the free hours. Ours are split across the whole year, as they don’t offer term time only, so we get basically one day free, and pay for the other day each week.

If the 15 free hours is spread across the year it’s just over 10 hours per week. So you are basically paying for 1 day each week. It seems like a lot but I’m not in London, our nursery is about £65 per day.

Are you using tax free childcare (20% off) if entitled? Can you reduce one of the days to half a day until you go back to work?

I’m not sure what this is? It’s so hard to find the info out there and I can’t log into my HRMC account so my partner has done it all. Where can I find out more about this?

www.gov.uk/tax-free-childcare

All year round. So I guess that explains the high cost.

It’s really easy to use once it’s all set up and as this works like a bank account (you deposited the money in then the top up is added on a schedule then you pay the nursery from there).

No it’s 2 full days minimum and that seems to be the norm where we live. I am looking into the tax free childcare now others have also mentioned it. Thank you

Thank you- have looked now. So instead of paying the £550 to the nursery we deposit in there and they will send the money to the nursery?

Sort of
think of it like your bank account.

you put in £8 to the account the. gov add £2
you can then make a payment to your childcare provider from that account

Are you also eligible for tax free childcare if so that'll get you £165 off a month

By law if a nursery is offering the funding they have to offer it for free. How they offer the hours is up to them, so they could do three hours a day or two x 7.5 hour days or three x 5 hour days. (Term time only) They can charge for extras but it has to be optional. So they can charge for food, nappies, crafts. But have to give you the option to provide your own. Obviously they can charge for any extra hours you use but it has to be optional.

Thank you as others have also enjoyed ruined it.will be using it now