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.

Exactly this. As parents that needed year round 8am-6pm childcare, the introduction of the new funding stung us, as the nursery just put up prices for the extra hours and we ended up paying more to subsidise others.

However, private day nurseries don’t have to accept the funding if they don’t want to. We moved our DC to a nursery that doesn’t accept funding or tax-free childcare and it’s saving us £200 a month per child.

That seems like it’s what’s happening at my nursery - a limited number of fully free, no charge places are only available on Fridays. I would assume that satisfies the requirements that the nursery provides it, and the rest of us have the charges and pay very little less with funding than we do for a standard full-time place.

Pre-prep at the local boarding school is cheaper than regular nursery for ages 3-5.

I recommend people look up the rates your local LA pay for the funded hours.

For 3-4 year olds it is often less than the nursery hourly rates this is true BUT what is paid for 9months-3 will be more im sure. My local area it's £11 odd an hour for 9mth-3 and just shy of £6 per hour for 3-4 year olds. Private hours range from £5-£7 an hour locally so while providers may be missing out on say £40 a week for a full time 3 year old by accepting funding they are making significantly more to offset that with an extra £200-250 ish a week from 9mth-3.

When funding was just for 3-4 year olds and vulnerable 2 year olds then yes nursery had a point that the funding costs the business money. But that simply isn't the case anymore! Of course they still claim the funding costs them money because they need to gaslight parents into accepting immoral fees

www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-education-and-childcare--2/early-education-and-childcare-effective-from-1-april-2025#fn:1

The updated guidelines for LA for anyone interested. If your nursery doesn't meet these requirements then the LA has a duty to sort it out.

Yes, but don’t forget the staff to child ratios which are

• Under 2 years: 1 adult to 3 children
• 2 years: 1 adult to 4 children
• 3 years and over: 1 adult to 8 or 13 children

so given that there should be a minimum of 2 staff in a room the costs to staff a room of under 2’s or 2 yr olds is proportionally more than a room for 3 yrs and over. Hence the difference in funding rates. The 1 to 8 is if the staff member is not qualified to level 6 (or a qualified teacher). 1to 13 if so qualified. If I remember correctly that is.

A funded 9-3 day works out at £5.50 a day. £3.20 for a hot meal and the rest towards consumables. I think that is pretty good value to get a hot meal and snacks and use of pens, paint, day trips etc. cheaper than a couple hours at soft play and being educated for 6 hours.

DAngela The nurseries (midlands) were spread out across different client bases from deprived area to moderately affluent, but yes there was usually a waiting list at all of the nurseries. Term time only OR full daycare was offered, great for parents who wanted term time only as funding was more effective for them, but of course less income for the nursery. But the main reason for closures was lack of availability of qualified staff. Many practitioners did not come back to childcare work after the pandemic. Nursery practitioners are truly underpaid/undervalued across the sector. The profession is just not financially attractive. Funding was meant to address this somewhat but it hasn’t and until adequate funding across 51 weeks if parents need it is forthcoming then things will not change. In fact they will get worse. 200 nurseries a year are closing (~10000 places).

That seems expensive! Are they being paid twice? Once by you and another from funding?
How much do they charge per hour without funding?

Pleased I didn't have any of these extortion top up fees when mine were at nursery 20 years ago.

That's how I see some of these nurseries behaving.
There is a very vocal group on Facebook ran by nursery owners and clearly the motivation is profit and lots of it! Trying to circumvent rules like not allowing parents to provide their own food due to 'allergies'. How do schools manage it then?!

I much preferred my lovely childminder than nurseries. Full of (the cheapest to pay) 17 year old kids who were clearly bored out of their minds.

So they don’t do per hour. It’s per day paid monthly. So it’s just over £250 a month for one day and the free 15 hours are only available for a few hours in the middle of each day. That reduces the monthly fee to c. 215.

So we are in 3 days but can only access 6 hours a week of the free funding.

It is extortionate. Everyone I know staggers the children so you don’t have two in at once.

@POSTC123
Hmm that doesn't seem right at all! Hopefully the stricter rules will not allow them only put the funded hours into awkward times of the day.

It's a private nursery so I have no idea if that's allowed or not.

If it's incorrect hopefully someone else raises it.

I certainly don't want to rock the apple cart. I very much like the nursery! It's one of the best in the area

Does it still count as a top up when the amount is more than the difference between the government funding and the nursery’s private fees? Everybody knows what the government funding amount is and what the nursery’s private fees are… so what’s their excuse for charging more than the difference? Just plain profiteering out of parental ignorance and getting away with it.

What ratios were you operating with? Up to 13 3 year olds per staff should surely cover wages of staff?

The 1:13 ratio wasn't very common 10+ years ago and you need to be paying a teacher (more than minimum wage) to achieve that.

I think the issue a lot of parents have is that the nursery hourly fee rate suddenly increases when funding is applied.
I think nurseries should have to advertise their hourly rate by law so parents would know if this is being increased on their bills.

I’m finding it difficult to unpick whether the government guidelines permit nurseries to single out parents that use funded hours for higher private hours charges. That sort of surcharge is clearly a top up fee in disguise but not sure whether it’s a good enough disguise to allow nurseries to get away with it.

The Poole ruling is going to have far-reaching consequences for a lot of settings.

The County where I work has made it clear to all settings that they will have to support parents who challenge nursery top-ups and unnecessary fees. Settings are already talking about opting out of accepting funding.

its going to put a lot of smaller settings in great financial jeopardy, I suspect.

@Cletus7 settings can charge whatever they like for hours which are in addition to funded hours.

When families were only entitled to 15 hours of funding, nurseries used to make up the shortfall in what they received in funding by increasing the hourly cost for other hours.

Now that so many families are eligible for 30 hours of funding, nurseries have lost that avenue to make up the shortfall.

This is why settings are now closing, or withdrawing from the funding scheme.

@Littlefish I think settings are generally okay with funding rates for under 2s and under 3s which are the age ranges that the 30 hour funding expansion has occurred in. In my area, the funding rates for under 2s and under 3s are higher than private rates. The contention seems to be squarely about underfunding of 3-4 year olds where 30 hours funding was already available and has not expanded. By that logic, the expansion in funding might have eased pressures on nurseries. Similarly, relaxation of child to staff ratios for 2 year olds, should also have eased pressures.
I agree that settings can charge whatever fees they like for private hours but unsure about whether it’s permissible to charge a higher private hours rate solely to parents that are accessing funded hours. It’s one thing to increase private fees uniformly for everyone, another matter when the increases are just for parents accessing funded hours in addition to their private hours.

But given their massive income listed in Companies House I don’t think they’re struggling.

Income @DAngela ? I’m very surprised that a small nursery chain is filing full accounts not abbreviated accounts.

Isn’t the fact that being a chain is the sign of a profitable business though? I don’t suppose many would open more if these weren’t viable.

You can be profitable without a massive income and have a massive income without being profitable. I'm not sure I see the point you are making?

Additionally, you might have been profitable at your first outlet and then opened your second etc, but the economy changes - for example, in the number of funding hours at lower/zero profit level and the increase in minimum wage and NI contributions, meaning that you used to make a profit but you don't now.

(I think the OP's child is at a two-site nursery rather than a big chain, but I may have misread)

Also West Mids. We pay just over £900 for 4 days, with 15h funding. It would be about £1200 without the funded hours, so equates to about one "free" day per week. The fees are going up by 7% next month though.

We moved from London, where we were paying £1800 for four days, with the funding. We chose to move in order to be able to afford to have a second child.

Mine were there not 20 years ago, but more than a decade ago.

My daycare was open 8-6 and we could access 3h in the morning, 3h in the afternoon. Adding up to 15h (term time only) for over 3s only. Since half days were 5h long, one would have to be there at least 2.5days a week to access the full 15h and one would have paid for 10h 'full price' alongside the 15h free (and for 25h full price out of term time). Even then, for my (independent, SE based, not in a chain) nursery, it was something of a struggle to give those LA-funded hours without top up, but they could make it work across the piece with babies/children up to three paying full price for all their hours and over 3s paying full price for at least 10h a week (and more if they were there 3-5 full days)

The economics are completely different with the reduced ability to cross subsidise, now that more age groups are in the LA-funded hours and more LA-funded hours (ie the 30h per week group) for more children.

There wasn't a halcyon time when the funding was adequate everywhere. It was more juggle-able previously, that's all.