does the free 15 hours grant HAVE to be over 3 days?

[Liz79]

Our plan is for both DCs (will be 3yo and a baby) to do 2 full days at nursery which will be 20 hours.

Does anyone know how strict the rules are, if the free 15 hours HAS to be over 3 days or would it be ok over 2 like we plan?

Thanks

At my ds's nursery you can use a maximum of 6 hours funding in one day, the equivalent of 2 3 hour sessions, so if it is the same everywhere you would be able to use 12 hours of funding over 2 days.

HTH

As a childminder I am able to access the grant for children over 3yrs in my care (or shared care with another provider). The rules are:
10 hours max if only 1 day
7 hours per day if attending for 2 days. The remaining hour cannot be accumulated and used the following term.
This is how my local authority advise us, perhaps other areas have different rules.

That sounds more hopeful, thank you. I will ask nursery and get it straight from them. Hopefully I won't have to end up paying loads just to get the 3 days in!

The nursery funding is supposed to be flexible, however as katieskids says some LA's have "rules" as to how it can be accessed, they all tend to be different.

I find it also makes a difference if the nursery you are using is state maintained or private, if it's a private provider what they tend to do is work out your bill for the days you need ie: 3 days or 30hrs then deduct the 15hrs off so you would pay for the 15hrs IYSWIM. But remember that the funding is term time only (38 wks I think) so your bill could go up a little during the year.