Extortionate food and sundries costs

[Win100]

I’ve just had my October bill as my little one started nursery in September. I’ve just found out they charge £30 a DAY for meals and nappies. They use Aldi nappies….. is £30 a day a lot?? That’s £90 a week for his meals and I feel like thats what we spend on a food shop a week for our family of 3? He has 4 nappy changes a day so that’s like 20p in Aldi nappies. I refuse to believe he eats £30 worth of food a day as i certainly don’t?! Anyone have any thoughts on this 🥲🥲

Yes, that is absolutely ridiculous. I could feed my household for that!

Well it’s doubtful they’re spending that on food and nappies, but it’s very likely they’re using it to subsidise costs in some way due to the woeful lack of funding they get from the government now the ‘free hours’ have been extended to younger children.

I would be bringing my own nappies and packed lunch.

I’d speak to them about it, I didn’t think they could make this charge mandatory?

That’s what I thought. I just couldn’t believe how much the cost went up from him attending two days in September to 3 days in October. It doubled for an extra day and the way around it is the stretched funding etc and the consumables costs. I’m honestly flabbergasted and at a loss as to how to proceed. I don’t want to be providing 3 x meals 3 x snacks 3 days a week as it’s a lot of planning and sorting on top of being at work but at this point I’m not sure I have a choice. He also seems to eat all the meals at nursery and throws mine on the floor so I don’t know whether to just suck it up and be grateful he eats there 🫣

It’s not mandatory they did say I can provide my own but they never provided a breakdown of the daily costs so I’m only just finding out now through asking.

I have to pay £11 a day for food, and an additional £5 for consumables, but we don't pay for nappies or wipes as he doesn't use them anymore.

You can't take your own food at our nursery; for allergy reasons, but it'd probably go awfully if you did, as they'd want whatever the rest were having... You used to be able to opt out but that just meant the day rate kept going up.

3 days makes a massive difference anyway, though. It doubles my bill, and we get full funding.

Three days tips it for us, too, as the way they stretch the funding over a whole year you get one ‘free’ day a week, and the third day they just charge a lot more for, so even though our bill has come down a lot from what it was, it’s in no way as low as I dreamed it would be once my son turned 3. Can’t provide lunch because of allergies in other children but my son wouldn’t want that anyway, nor me, he eats things like chickpeas and lentil Dahl there and at home or if I made it he would absolutely never.

They're using in as a top up, which is being cracked down on now.

They should provide itemised invoices showing:

• the free entitlement hours
• additional private paid hours
• food charges
• non-food consumables charges
• activities charges

The deadline I think is Jan 2026 for this.

Also "Parents must be able to opt out of paying for chargeable extras and the associated consumable or activity for their child" AND "chargeable extras must not be a condition of taking up a free place"

Thets a fine line between being extortionate and staying afloat.

Is it £90 for 3 days a week, or is there a different extra charge for the extra hours over the 21 "free" hours?

85% of nurseries make a loss on those "free" places. They should just stop offering them.

absolutely you can question it, clearly he isn’t eating or using £30 a days worth of nappies. It’s a top up fee in all but name. They are not allowed to do this. Of course, if everyone creates a fuss, they may stop offering the free hours or close altogether. How long is he there for? I would consider £30 for a days childcare good value tbh, especially if you can also use TFC to save a further £6.

It’s not a free place. It’s the 30 hours government funding that has just been introduced for 9 month olds.

Someone's making a big profit from private nurseries.

It's not just government funding. It's also funded by nurseries who make a loss on it.

If nurseries are making big profits why are so many shutting down?
And what's wrong with making a profit? If you've got a business employing 20 people and you're paying for the building, insurances, training, fire safety etc etc etc, wouldn't YOU want to make a profit? Why do people expect everybody in childcare to not think about money.
If you mean the chains are making big profits: possibly. The worst nurseries I've worked in were in a big chain. The cheapest of food. Boxes of Happymeal toys to play with bought from boot sales. Unusable fire escapes. Sticky toys that you had to wash your hands after using.

You get what you pay for.

Exactly this!!! ‘Free hours’ ‘government subsidy’ doesn’t pay enough.

op I reckon you should say that you don’t value their care of your child enough to pay their ‘sundries’ send your own nappies in, send your own food in, then watch as your funded hours magically disappear as the nursery can’t actually stay afloat without this extra money and closes

you could always pull him out and find a cheaper nursery or care for him yourself?

Jesus I wasn’t saying I didn’t want him in there. This post comes across very aggressive. This is my first child and first month back to work paying for childcare and the costs just seemed a lot to me so I wanted some other opinions.

Surely this was also in your contract ?

You don’t seem happy with paying for child care so I was just telling your your options. Complain enough and they will find a reason to remove him

What you are paying for three says now is less than some people were paying a day this time last year. What is the actual day rate of the nursery, how much are you paying for funds hours and how much is actually this extra charge?

We don’t charge that much and it does seem a little high - but your payment covers meals and nappies but also things like nappy sacks, wipes and creams. Medication if they provide it ie calpol. It pays for someone to prep and cook the meals and their wages, not just the food on the plate. All the extra activities outside the basic EYFS provision, washing things like bibs, keeping staff in ratio, so wages. Admin costs, etc.

The government funding states it is just for the educational part of the care, not the actual physical care. Tax free childcare cover the extras, so you can still get 85% paid through this scheme. UC payments aren’t so generous though for the extras.

Look up the rate your LA pay for the under 2 age bracket before you accept they are not being given enough to cover the space.

I get really irritated with the spouting of how the funding doesn’t cover the costs. It maybe doesn’t in private nurseries because the owner/management takes their money and run it like a business. I think running nurseries and schools (academy’s) like a business only hurts the service users. I’m a childminder and the funding is more per hour for under 3s than any local childminder charges without funding. There is a loss in the over 3 age bracket for childminder but not in nursery because they have more children to adult ratios so make up the money there.

there was early years guidance issued recently trying to tackle this over charging for ‘consumables’. It’s a national problem.

only thing I will say is possibly the charge covers things like music or dance classes the nursery hire in? Even so it won’t be costing anything like what you are being charged!

our nursery charges extra for ‘extra curricular’ activities weekly - a Spanish lesson and a cookery class. In reality I know that one of the nursery workers is from Columbia and does a little session in Spanish teaching vocab and songs, and the other is the on-site nursery cook letting the older ones help her prep veggies and mix things in bowls etc as part of an activity or they make their own sandwiches for tea on a Friday. Both are great and I appreciate having them but they don’t cost the nursery any extra on top of staff wages. It’s just an example of where they can show their extra charge is going when in reality it’ll be simply helping to subsidise running costs.

They're really not - the nursery we used was a private ltd co, their accounts fully available to view online, they barely break even each year for the last 5 years.

The highest I’d heard before reading this was £26/day for a nursery in Bath. We recently moved from the SW (where most of my friends are paying £20+/day) to the NE where we pay £8/day, so I suspect location will be a factor.