How much do you pay in top up fees at nursery?

[DAngela]

DS is now getting “15hrs a week” funding, which on the invoice seems to equate to 8hrs and 11 minutes, and then there’s a consumables fee on top of £2 an hour which is charged for the entirety of any funded or part-funded days.

Nursery costs £70 a day for 10hrs, so effectively the funding is saving us £50 a week.

Is this pretty standard? I was hoping for a bit more of a saving.

The three nurseries locally here are run by two companies. They both charge top ups and don't allow you to send food. They each have a "accept it or go elsewhere" attitude so parents don't have any choice as there isn't an elsewhere that's any different

I can't decide whether you wanted help or not? I've tried but you seem pretty resistant so I'll leave you to it. Have a good day.

A court recently found in favour of a man who wants the local authority to pay back the additional charges he had to,pay for a “free” place in a private nursery - the thinking being the LA should have enforced the “no extra charges” rule l Its a very detailed and interesting ruling caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/admin/2025/224

I am so glad it’s changing, when my son was eligible for the funded hours we upped a day in nursery so my mum didn’t have to do a 2 hour commute, one day a week, to look after my son anymore.

I calculated that the funding would mean that the additional day wouldn’t cost more than what I was paying. I was SO wrong, my bill went up so much, loads of additional things appeared on the invoice (that wasn’t actually being provided), we couldn’t afford it anymore and had to move nurseries. Very stressful.

We moved him to the more expensive day rate nursery, but because they applied the funding correctly and didn’t charge top ups it worked out cheaper, and the care was excellent.

I think the old nursery was exploiting loop holes in charging top up fees to maximise profits, whilst banking on the fact most parents wouldn’t be in a position to move their children. Where the new nursery just had a slightly higher than average day rate for all children, to absorb the difference in the funding they received in the preschool room v the costs.

We pay nothing for thr 15 funded hours for dd (just turned 3). It works out as one free day a week spread over 51 weeks. Anyone accessing the 30 funded hours (from April for us) pays £17.50 a week for consumables and gets 2 free days over the 51 weeks. Our nursery supplies all nappies, wipes, calpol for teething kids, hot lunch, tea, snacks, etc. We supply ibuprofen (teething toddlers), their own pot of bum cream if needed.

Edit - they also supplied a few standard brands of baby milk, as they accept them from 3 months. Mine started at 5 months and 7 months, and apart from a couple of niggles, I've been happy with them. Mainly because the kids are happy there and at home - they both formed close bonds with a couple of key workers who they're still able to spend time with even after they leave their room - my dd keeps asking to have the baby room leader home for a playdate or to her birthday etc. She gets cuddles and love from her everyday.

£3.60 per hour. We're Warwickshire, so fairly close to you. DS does 2 days a week, and I pay just under £500 a month. That does include all food (although the amount and quality has dropped a LOT recently), sun cream, wipes, cream, calpol etc... and did include nappies before he was potty trained.

We also can't send our own food in. I asked about this when it was mentioned on a thread last week that it had to be allowed, and they said they accept children with serious allergies so they had to be responsible for all the food on site. The consumables fees are down as "Essential Extras", and you can't opt out of paying them.

Whether Labour will do anything remains to be seen, but my nursery has already said that they'll have to increase the day rate if they do, and it went up in February and will go up by a further £9 a week in April, too.

We pay £0 for 15 hours for a 1yr old. That includes food. I provide nappies but they use their own most of the time. I have asked to increase my hours, which I have to pay for, but no availability.

That’s really interesting and I’m optimistic may have significant ramifications for all nurseries who accept the government and charge top-up fees.

I’ve just started looking at nurseries (expecting to be attending from June ‘26) and it’s shocking how little difference the ‘30 partially funded hours’ make to the cost of a place!

It’s crazy how much it varies, for presumably a similar level of care. We provide nappies, wipes and nappy cream, I should have said.

Realistically, despite the cost, I’m unlikely to move him as he’s settled, the staff are great, and I imagined all the nurseries charge fairly similarly. But maybe they don’t? This one is definitely using loopholes to maximise profit.

Don’t forget the free funding only covers school weeks (38?) and the 15 hours are stretched to 51 weeks if your child is full time (not just school terms). This equates to about 11 hours per week. I ran a nursery for 33 years until 10 years ago. I can absolutely state that the funding allowance is not enough to cover staff wages for those hours, let alone employers NI, overheads and ongoing training. Full fee paying parents and charges for ‘extras’ bridge the gap somewhat.

Ours doesn’t charge top up fees.

But - you can only use the 15 free hours if you go min. 3 days a week.

You can’t use the additional 15 hours at all.

Full time less the 15 hours is £1850. Which is about a ~15% saving on the fees, so less than 15 hours spread across the year.

Yeah, I know it’s only term time. But as that works out to 11hrs a week, you’d think we’d get a day (which they say is 10hrs, even though he’s only there 8.5hrs) free? However they’ve worked it out as 8hrs 11 minutes per day free, then added the £2 hourly consumables charge to the whole day.

They've just put up the fees 10% and announced a new three-day-minimum policy so I think they’re using every loophole they can to maximise profit. Which is, of course, fine, as they’re a business I’m choosing to use. But given their massive income listed in Companies House I don’t think they’re struggling.

I’m sure some of the other nurseries PP have mentioned, who charge far less, are struggling though.

'Essential extras' are £26 a day.

We chose the nursery based on how they do the funded hrs.

So we get 11per week the moment all year, and we pay £1 per funded hour used, so at the moment we pay £11 for those hours plus £75 a week for the other sessions.

Once we get the 30hrs, we'll get 22 each week all year round so we'll be paying £22 a week as DS only goes 22 hours per week

It costs us £13 for a 'funded' 10 hour day.

In total the ‘funded’ day is costing £22.60 so it sounds like that’s at the top end of average.

I guess when we are eligible for the 30hrs in September, it’ll go down another £50 a week (though I’d be surprised if they don’t put the paid fees up to compensate…)

use the funding rates below and compare what nurseries in your area are charging per hour (full rate) in order to determine the gap. Bear in mind that this is an average. Your LA might be more/less.

The national average hourly funding rates for local authorities in 2024/25 are: Three and four-year-olds: £5.88 per hour. The rate has fallen by 3% in real terms (when adjusted for inflation) since 2017/18 (in 2024/25 prices). Two-year-olds: £8.28 per hour.

How does that break down? It seems excessive

Or are you paying for some wrap around hours at full rate?

An increase of 10% is very brave. I can only assume the nursery is oversubscribed. A friend of mine ran 5 very successful nurseries. In the last two years she has closed 4 of them as no longer viable. If this is widespread I guess demand for good nursery places is high.

No top up fees. They supply snacks drinks wipes we supply meals and nappies.

It is oversubscribed with a waiting list and so are all the others in the area.

Is your friend in an area with a lot of options and no waiting lists?

I can imagine nurseries struggling if they aren’t charging top up fees and are only/mostly accepting children who are only there for the free hours, but that’s absolutely not what’s happening at my nursery or in my wider area.

I think the opposite, I think totally free places should be available at nursery schools but not private day nurseries. Ultimately the people who need full time childcare are the ones subsidising those who only use 15/30 hours term time. The funding should just come off their hourly rate and you pay the difference imo.

The nursery my DC left in September charged £25 extra a day, this was based on using 6 hours funding. The charge was for 1.5 hours that you have to use (the shortest day they offer is 7.5 hours), breakfast, cooked lunch, snacks, nappies, and activities.

However when the new funding came in they reduced the day length and increased the prices. Pre-new-funding it was £330 a week for 5 standard days year-round, with the funding it’s £318 a week. So a total saving of £12 a week… if you needed the ‘breakfast club’ early drop off you ended up £18 a week worse off compared to pre-funding.

The only parents that benefitted was those that either work school hours, term time only. Or that don’t need much (or any) childcare as they work alternate shifts to their partner. At our nursery the parents who worked Monday-Friday, 9-5, paying out thousands in childcare, did not see any benefit from the funding.