Preschool charging for lunchtime supervision

[MDDR]

I'm looking at moving my youngest daughter to a preschool attached to a primary school - Her older sister already attends there.
The hours are 8:45 - 3:15 and we'd receive the 30 government funded hours. I've just received some additional information stating a lunchtime supervision fee of £3 per day applies as the funded hours don't include a 30 minute lunchtime so supervision must be paid.

I know that this isn't allowed under the government guidance so I'm intrigued as to how other preschool settings are doing this to account for school weeks that are longer than 30 hours.

What do your preschool settings do?

The alternative is that you need to disrupt your working day to supervise your child for lunch. A nominal charge (less than a coffee!) is a pretty good deal given there’s no funding to cover the full day.

We’ve had a number of very old much loved preschool settings fold locally as they could only provide an older style morning session or otherwise were not able to offer a full school day length week, so it wasn’t viable for working parents. At least with 5 days of provision during school hours, you’ve got a fighting chance of making it work.

Technically they shouldn’t charge like that now but realistically if you want to do their full days there will be a 2.5hr charge each week. It’s another sector that is too regulated considering many preschools are private businesses.

We offer different options so parents can mix and match to make up their 30 (or 22) hours in full blocks but we are open from 7.30-6 not just school hours.

Many nurseries and pre schools do this. No they cannot charge for a forced break at lunch time BUT what they do is have morning and afternoon sessions only rather than a full day. Parents either pick up between the 2 sessions or pay a half hour charge. In the grand scheme of things it is really not worth causing a fuss over.