Is this right? Funded hours

[AutumnLeaves91]

Nursery - Working Parents/Funded Hours

Hey everyone! I know every nursery is different but I’m wondering how much everyone is paying after funded hours are taken off?

We have a place for my LO to go to three full days a week. Each day is £65.37. The entitlement is for 38 weeks but the nursery stretches this so it covers the 50 weeks they’re open. The fees include milk, food, clothing they use etc. So we’re not charged anything on top of that, as I know some places do.

I have asked the nursery how many hours we would need to pay for per week once the funded ones have been used (and stretched over the year), and they have confirmed it’ll roughly work out at 8.7 hours a week we’d need to pay for.

They’ve said this will roughly be £340 a month but that’s without tax free childcare coming off as well. For context, without any funding it would usually be £780 odd a month.

I see posts on here a lot about how much people have to pay after hours are used but I’m still wondering if this sounds right? When I work out that a full day is 65.37 and a full day is approximately 10.5 hours, that means each hour is £6.22. If I’m paying for 8.7 hours a week that’s £54 a week, for four weeks it’s 216. I know each month isn’t four weeks but how have they got that £340?

Could it be that you only get 1 'free' day as they can't split the 'free' hours in a day?
So you have to pay for 2 days and get 1 free and loose the additional hours

You need to ask them for the calculation.

I’m not really sure, they just explained it works out as 22.8 hours

Do you mean ask them how they calculated the 340?

You've made a lot of assumptions based only some of the information. This is likely where the error has occurred. Ask them for an itemised invoice that they are required to provide now.

You need the invoice but that does sound correct to me based on my nursery, it’s actually lower than what ours will be once my daughter is eligible for the 30 free hours. Remember they can say the hours only apply between e.g. 9am & 3pm etc, you need to check with your specific nursery.

Wow that very cheap!! I wouldn’t be asking too many questions!!!

Ask them for an itemised invoice.
It may be that they only apply funded hours at certain times or they are charging for “voluntary” extras.

usually the day rate is cheaper than the hours for the day. They might be charging the full hourly rate for anything over the 22 hours per week.

Milk / nappies etc wouldn’t be included in the funding so you would have to pay for those across all free days

Yeah to be honest I wasn’t too annoyed it’s only when my mum was questioning it who works in a nursery - I know many other places are worse!

The £340 they charge covers milk/nappies etc

Just adding here -
Thanks so much for your replies so far everyone! I’m a FTM so obviously haven’t done this before :) I also am very tired so some of my replies aren’t making sense - sorry!

He starts in October so haven’t got any kind of invoice yet but will be sure to ask if/can it be itemised for me

Just looked at dgd bill. She does 3 full days.
We are charged a consumables charge of £1.50 per hour for each funded hour, and £7.84 per hour for each non funded hour.

Well that's exactly the PPs point, that's why it's 340 and not 216 along with a couple of other errors you've made.

£700 per month for 4 full days here

To add, that’s with 30 hours funding already deducted!

Is this return to work from mat leave? So he'll turn 9 months for funding?

You need to be back at work by 30th September if you want funding in that term. Otherwise you'll have to wait until January.

Thanks I realise that now. :)

My maternity ends in June and I use annual leave from that point - He will be entitled to funding from 1st of September. :)

Thank you, I appreciate you sharing!

Yes, ask for a breakdown. It's probably not as simple as dividing the daily charge by the number of hours (although it should be!).

Thank you, I appreciate it! :)

Mine goes 2 days a weeks and currently gets the 15 hours funding, I think the daily fee is about £60ish a day so with the hours and the tax free childcare we pay just under £50 a week. So basically for 1 day is how it registers in my head.

you need the invoice but for one thing, need to work annualised. 4 weeks x 12 months would be 48, not 52 - each month is actually more like 4.3 weeks for a start. So they’ll probably multiply the weekly cost by 52 then divide by 12

they might have ‘hours’ costa and then a top up fee for sundries.

Ah yeah that seems about right! Thank you :)