Free nursery hours - for dummy’s

[Elephant9]

Hi all
Can anyone really dumb down how the free nursery hours work?

my DS is 2, 3 in November.
we are thinking about putting him in nursery a couple days a week from September.

I want to know..

1. are we eligible? Both work (I am on mat leave atm)
2. how many hours?
3. how do we apply?
4. what is the process?

I’ve heard it’s very complicated and I just want someone to explain it to me really simply- from experience. I heard something about a code needed 3 months before or something but honestly I have no clue.

sorry and thanks!

Apply here

https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk/

If you both earn under £100k net then you are eligible. You will be eligible for 30 funded hours term time only. You find a nursery that you like and make sure they offer funded hours. Some nurseries allow you to "stretch" your funded hours over the whole year, so it works out to be around 22hrs per week. Then you apply for the funded hours online via the government website. The government gives you a code which you give to nursery. They then claim the hours on your behalf. There may be extra fees you have to pay nursery - the hours that are not funded (eg. Our nursery is 8-6 so then we pay for the extra hours), lunch, "consumables" - basically a contribution towards materials etc. The nursery can give you a rough idea of what you will need to pay. Every 3 months you log into your account on the gov website to confirm you aren't going to earn over £100k net so your funding continues.

As well as funded hours, you will also be eligible for taxfree childcare. This is a different system that runs alongside funded hours. You set up an online government account, you pay money into that account. The government tops it up by an extra 20% (up to a max of £500 a quarter). You then make a payment to nursery directly from the government account.

So for example, we are in London and DD goes to nursery FT so we stretch the hours over the whole year. Once her funded hours are applied, we are charged around £850 a month. We pay £700 into the govt account, the govt tops it up by £175 so the account now has £875 in it. We set up a payment from the account directly to nursery for the bill.

The form to get the code was simple and only needs doing once.
If you are both working it should be 30 funded hours - note the use of funded and not free, there can be a top up fee for things not included in the payment. We paid £64 for a non funded day and £12 for a funded day which covered food and administration and something else I can't remember. For us this was 3 10h days.
I'm not sure if you qualify for funding on mat leave I think you do but hopefully someone more knowledgeable can answer
The funded hours are only term time. You can do term time only so they are only at nursery during term time, you can do full time paying full rate during the school holidays some nurseries average out the costs over the course of the year so you pay the same each month but our nursery billed each month depending on the amount of term time days there were. So we paid the least in September which was nearly all funded days and the most in August that was all unfunded days

You do qualify for funding on mat / pat leave. There's a special box to tick to say you are on parental leave and your funding continues (I've just been through the process for DD1 whilst on mat leave with DD2).

You can only apply a month before your return to work, and you need the code to be dated before 31st August to be entitled to the autumn term.

Can I jump on to ask if someone can explain the tax free childcare claim back thing too? Please!

Have a look at my post above. I explained it in the second paragraph.

Some of the above answers are only partly helpful. I am involved in the admin for a preschool so know quite a lot about this!

From January 2026 (as your DS is 3 in autumn 2025), you will as a minimum be eligible for 15 hours pw term-time of "universal funding", whatever your working situation. If you both work, both earn at least equivalent of minimum wage for 16 hours per week and both earn under £100k pa you will be eligible for 15 hours pw term-time of "working parent funding" now so 15 hours for autumn term and a total of 30 hours from January 2026. (I didn't see anything in the OP's message saying she was on maternity leave, but someone seems to have assumed you were and just to answer that, you'd still be eligible if you were on maternity leave.)

If you put him in a term-time only pre-school then you will get the full 15 or 30 hours per week. If you put him in an all-year nursery then you get less, ie about 11 or 22 hours per week (eg 15 * 38/52). Each pre-school/nursery works differently, some will ask you to pay for extras eg food, craft materials, outings, so your hours won't be "free". Some won't accept children with only funded hours, eg might require to sign up for at least 20 hours a week. So decide what you want and what you are willing to pay for and make sure you get in writing from the nursery/pre-school you choose what your options are and what if any extra payments they request. (My pre-school is a not-for-profit that pays no rent so we don't ask for any extra payments, though parents have to provide lunches. Any setting that is trying to make a profit or indeed any that has higher costs than us will almost certainly want some extra fees.)

And in case it's not obvious, you need to both apply for a nursery/pre-school place and separately apply for any working parent funding.

The setting will require you to complete a form each term for the funding. Please be kind to the administrator and fill this in properly when asked as it's a nightmare trying to get them completed by all the parents on time (as there is only a short period each term when they can be filled in)!

Mat leave confirmed in the OP, question 1 in her list.

And as administrator you should update yourself with the rules. Settings cannot insist additional hours are purchased. There must be an option for completely free funded hours. Any extra hours or services must be optional.

Also, the working parent entitlement increases to 30 hours from September 2025 for 9 months+.

@KateyCuckoo You're right, I re-read the OP twice and missed the mat leave. Re the rules, I know what the rules in England say (and you'll have seen that we stick to them). You're right, if they accept funding there must be an option for completely funded hours, but they don't have to make it one that parents would want, so in practice my advice is very relevant. They offer funded hours in such short blocks that few people would take them up, or they only offer them in 10- hour blocks all year round. Or they offer 9-12 and 12.30-3.30 sessions but 12-12.30 has to be paid for. Or they only offer 15 funded hours rather than 30 (which is legal). And if the OP is in Wales then actually providers can have mandatory extra charges.

And yes I'd forgotten about the change to 30 hours WP funding from autumn - my main point in posting was that no one had mentioned universal funding if they weren't eligible for WP funding and that I don't think it was clear they needed to apply to a nursery as well as for the funding.

And by the way, I said I was involved in the admin, not that I was the administrator (though I was for a short time when we were without one).