20% increase in Kids Planet nursery fees

[bc21]

DC1 is at a Kids Planet nursery. At the outset we agreed with the nursery to do a term time only booking 3 days a week and then add sessions in the holidays as and when needed (usually 2+ days a week) which were charged at the regular day rate. This increased for all sessions in Jan 2026 by £5.75 a day.

A few months ago they sent an updated fee sheet with a line on the bottom to say that ad hoc bookings may be charged at a different rate. Essentially they hiked the price up 20% for any ad hoc sessions - for us an increase of £15.50 per day. We queried it with head office, as did our nursery’s management, but we were told they weren’t taking feedback and if we didn’t like it, we didn’t have to book the extra sessions. But we obviously needed to as this change was mid-term and me and DH both work.

Today, the nursery posted on the Famly app that they had some “exciting news” and were rolling out this change to all nurseries after a successful trial. Needless to say this landed absolutely horribly and since they’d left comments on, parents were commenting like crazy about the impact this would have, the poor messaging, the lack of clarity on how and when this would be implemented etc.

After about 30-60 mins they turned off and hid the comments, and I notice this evening they’ve actually removed the post. I expect they’ll put a reworded version up with no option to comment soon.

Wondering if any other parents on here are affected and if there’s anything you think we can do to push back on this? Nurseries around here aren’t full so we could move but DC1 is very settled there so reluctant to do so. We have reduced our bookings over the summer compared to what we planned to do, so they’re actually getting less money out of us than what they would have, but I imagine there’s enough who don’t have this option for them to still see it as worth doing.

I have seen the screenshot (maybe it was you that posted in a FB group?) and the 'exciting news' was being able to make adhoc bookings on their app now...

I don't see a massive problem with them charging more for a flexible contract. You are benefitting from that arrangement too and it will cost them more to deliver a pay as you go system as opposed to regular days.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to charge more for ad hoc bookings. They were mad to let people use “ad hoc” days so much in the first place, that’s an admin nightmare. If you’re regularly booking “2+ days a week” in the holidays, that’s not really ad hoc at that point and becomes really hard to staff.

20% might not be reasonable, but nor is relying so heavily on the ad-hoc system. If you regularly need those days each week in the holiday, you should have to commit to them formally. You want to have your cake and eat it (the security of the needed days at base price when you want them, but not willing to pay to hold the space the couple of weeks you don’t) and that doesn’t work for the business.

Agreed with pp poster that using frequent ad hoc sessions must be a nightmare administratively / staff management etc with ratios. Even offering term time only places in an otherwise full time nursery must be a hassle and faff to organise.

At my nursery ad hoc sessions are a lot more expensive than if you are eg 4 or 5 days a week. I think it’s probably to disincentivise you from doing it - they will try to help you out if you’re in a bind, but they don’t want you doing it regularly.

It makes sense that it’s significantly more, as they have to have the staff in whether you book the day or not just in case you do, multiplied across all of the kids - so you’re actually paying for staff capacity that you might not use.

I’m surprised they were this flexible anyway.

I charge more for adhoc days at my nursery - always have though

we try not to offer them much - as it’s a bit of an admin hassle as others said and also we have to be so sure that the staff-child ratio is correct - it’s easy to overbook by mistake then I’m frantically calling agency staff in to cover having the extra kids which costs loads and then it cancels out the extra fees we’ve received

if I know how many are coming as permanent children then I have the rotas done right in advance

but I agree they have awful communication and the way they dumped it on you is horrible

Do you plan on coming back to your thread?

They posted today saying oops it was all a mistake we’re not charging more really.

Have to say I do agree it’s reasonable to charge more for ad-hoc though, as they can’t plan staffing for a regular schedule. You’re paying for the flexibility.