15hrs free funding: Is it common for providers to charge some kind of fee on top?

[splishsplosh]

I found a private pre school (the type open 9-3) where dd can do a couple of afternoons a week - filled in the forms etc - then got a call the next day telling me I would have to pay £50 as a non refundable deposit. As she is entitled to funding I asked what a deposit could be for? So they told me it was an admin fee.

I checked with Family Information Service who said providers could only charge for over 15hrs, or for extra services.

But when I queried this with the pre school they said no, it was only free at a council nursery, and they had to cover costs of the folders, photos, staff, activities, etc and offered me the chance to pay in installments.

As far as I can work out they are not allowed to do this, but several people have said they also know of places which have charged deposits or admin fees... is this happening widely? And if so, why is it being allowed to happen? Or am I wrong, and it is actually OK?

My son's playgroup charges a £10 non-refundable deposit which goes towards the child's profile which costs quite a bit to produce as there are always loads of photographs in them and also a playgroup t-shirt. When we were discussing the deposit, we decided that £50 was just too much, but I don't think it's illegal, it just shows your level of commitment I think.

The 15 hour funding is very complicated and in our area can only be charged in half hour chunks, so if your child did 14 3/4 hours per week, at our playgroup, you'd get 14 1/2 hours free and have to pay for the 15 minutes. Mad I know, but the only way the playgroup can make things fair for everyone.

My DS2 now does 16 1/2 hours a week doing 2 mornings and lunch and two five hour days and so I pay a bit of a top up.

I hope this helps, but if you have any questions do ask as I have been through quite a bit of the decision making stuff with the flexi15.

AFAIK, the funding covers 15 hours of sessions. It doesn't mean the child is entitled to 'free' nursery care, just the 15 hours. If the nursery or preschool don't charge anything on top of their normal session fees, then yes, it's effectively free. If the nursery charges admin fees on top of that, then that is not covered by the funding and therefore needs to be paid. It might not seem very reasonable, but I can't see any reason why they can't do that, I'm afraid.

Well I have been trawling various information on the net, and it states that the 15hrs free provision is available for all eligible children and therefore there must be no fees or conditions of access levied against parents accessing their entitlement - and something else about the entitlement will be entirely free at the point of delivery.

As far as i can understand it, it's a condition of providing funded places, that they should not impose any other charge... after all, the scheme is surely to make it equally possible for all parents to benefit, regardless of financial ability to pay?

The Family Information Service said funding can be taken away if the rules are broken.

I was only going to send her because it is free, and her friends go to nurseries for several sessions a week, and I think she would enjoy it. £50 is a lot of money to me, and we do lots of activities anyway... I'm just really surprised that a scheme for free child care places doesn't actually necessarily get provided for free.

I don't know about the legalities of this but my experience is this:

My DC have attended a private nursery 4 full days a week since they were about 6 months old as I went back to work. When they qualified for the vouchers and technically went into 'pre-school' the daily rate went up by £3 so the saving you made with the vouchers wasn't quite as much as it could have been.

Allegedly this was for extra equipment, a specially-trained Early Years teacher etc - none of which ever materialised.

This happened when DS1 turned 3 (nearly 3 years ago now) and has just happened again now DS2 has turned 3 - still pisses me off and it is just one big rip-off but they know that, if your child is happy and settled as both of mine have been, you aren't going to move them!!

I agree that £50 admin fee is a lot. Is your DD over 3? In most places the Flexi 15 is only available the term after the child is 3, before that you may well have to pay for sessions.

It might be worth looking at other pre-schools in your area to see what they do.

It should certainly be possible for you to be able to use just your 15 hours of free funding and not to pay a top up, particularly for just two afternoons a week, for the pre-school to qualify for the flexi-15 status (but they might not have applied for this).

I would recommend 'shopping' around if you're not happy though.

They are not allowed to charge anything if you use your free 15 hours, the nursery must be "free at the point of access". NO admin, NO deposit etc. we had a big furore with Asquith over my DD's nursery and had the council involved to get everything cleared up. Nurseries cannot make rules that make you unable to access the free funding (ie saying that you have to have a full morning so you have to pay for an extra 2 hours). What they can do is make an additional charge on any extra hours you use (so if the cost per hour is £5 normally and you want to utilise 20 hours per week, you could have 15 hours free and then they can charge say £5.50 per hour for your other 5 hours to cover admin etc).

If you look at your council website they should have information on who to contact, we're Derby and it was the "Families Information Service" that helped us.

PM me if you want any more information.

The hours are from the term after the third birthday, ie DD was 3 in October so free funding from Jan term, you also only get for 38 weeks a year (number of weeks in the terms). You would either have to have your DC in for term time only (so you couldn't use the nursery in half term weeks, Easter etc although nursery would be open). Asquith had two options, termtime or you could keep them in permanently and pay the extra so an extra 14 weeks of 15 hours divided by 12 to get a monthly payment.

Thanks Arion - that's what I thought. She was 3 in September, so is entitled to the funding. And I was planning a couple of 3 hour sessions a week term time only then 2 days 9-3 in September, again term time only.

It's a good nursery, and I know lots of people who have used it, and their children have loved it... I appreciate they will let me pay in installments, but I feel it is unfair that they are charging this when they shouldn't.

She has a place at a school nursery in September, but while they are free, they aren't flexible about how you use the funding... so can only use it for mornings OR afternoons, not combine it how it suits you. Which for me makes for about 9 miles walking a day (have an elder child at the school)

You are supposed to be allowed to access 15 hours per week during term time without having to pay ANYTHING on top. This is the Early Years guidelines but they do not enforce this.

Many settings do charge in various ways to make you pay something ie charging for a lunch hour meaning you cannot access a full day without having to pay something, also other settings add up the total hours at say £5 ph then take off 15 hours x the NEG rate (£3.74 ph) which they also are not allowed to do (this would be stopped if the setting was found out).

I run a pre-school and I was told by Early Years that we could not charge any extras etc for funded children including deposits so we have a 9-3 day with no extra costs so if parents want they can do 5 mornings or afternoons, 3 sessions plus a full day or 2 full days plus a session (or any other amount they want). I discovered other local pre-schools were still charging extras and Early Years response to me was that as long as parents were happy it didn't matter - talk about conflicting advice!!!! I think a £10 contribution to setting up things such as the name tags, photos in the beginning would be plenty to cover costs, we don't charge this but I would say it is reasonable as it is expensive to do these things.

My DS2 attends my setting but also attends a pre-school attached to an independant school and although they have a higher hourly rate you can still access your 15 free hours. We did have to pay a refundable deposit of £200 which they keep in case we don't give the correct notice (I may be doing them an injustice though as I think this may have been for the school part in September for him - I'm not sure).

ceebeegeebies - they are definitely NOT allowed to charge you the extra top up to their hourly rate - you must get these 15 hours free, they can charge you what you like over and above this - please call the council and speak to them about it.

As far as I know this was brought in around April 2010 but some settings are still doing it. Please please please check it out, I apologise if I'm wrong and there is some loop hole but from experience many private nurseries I know were upset about this rule as it means they are losing up to £2 per hour for funded children.

Lou I am getting my 15 hours 'free' - it is just they (imo artifically) put the hourly rate up as pre-schoolers need more attention/equipment/specialist learning than the average nursery child. So whilst I am saving, it is not as much as I thought it would be as I assumed the hourly rate would stay the same as it was for my DC when they were under-3 plus I am not convinced they are getting the 'extra' stuff that the increased hourly rate is paying for.

Does that make sense?

Anyway it doesn't surprise me - the nursery use any loophole they possibly can of extracting more money out of me - the latest being offering a 5% discount as I work in the NHS which seems straight forward...I assumed the discount would be from the figure before the 15-hours were deducted but oh no, it is 5% after the vouchers are deducted It is only a matter of pence ,I know, but just a symptom of the place - it is a good job that my DC are happy there otherwise I would have moved them a long time ago!!

I see, you have the 15 hours free then they bump up the hourly rate for the additional hours - this is just their way to recoop the money they lose from NEG compared to their hourly rate - crafty!

In case we have confused anyone else who has no idea what we're talking about - basically what should happen is - say DC does 20 hours per week at a nursery who's hourly rate is £5 per hour basically the invoices should say -

15 hours (NEG funded) £0.00
5 additional hours @ £5 per hour - £25.

Hope that helps!

So glad I found this thread desperately need help as I think my DD's nursery is being very crafty.
Currently she attends 2 mornings a week - their sessions last from 7.30 to 1.30 a day...so she does 12 hours a week. She is entitled to the 15 hrs free from January but they claim that they work it out over the week because of the length of their sessions so she would only get 3hrs free a day and I would pay the rest. So instead of paying £384 for 2 mornings aweek over a month I would pay £315 a month for her two mornings.....how can this be right? It's a discount but nowhere near the free childcare she's entitled to. Are they allowed to do this?

I think they can probably choose which hours they offer for free - so they might offer 5 mornings, or 2.5 days etc. However they can't say you have to have a 6 hour session but only get 3 hours free. Could your DD do 4x3 hour mornings instead?

I work in a private day nursery and as far as I know they should not be charging any extra as the funding comes from the government. The only reason they should charge extra is if you do any extra hours on top of the fifteen. They can be spread as parents wish or as term time only

so how come they are allowed to do this? Does anyone have any suggestions as to the best way to handle this as I'm feeling a little flustered by the whole thing. Obv my DD ha stotally settled in and would hate to drag her out and settle her somewhere new onlt to take her back out again for school. Thanks so much in advance MNetter's knew I could rely on you.

What hours are they offering you Dita?

Where I work you wouldn't be able to do 7.30-1.30 two days for free - you'd have 9-12 free and pay for any extra hours, but you could do 9-12 Monday to Friday for free. Where I work you'd have to pay for holidays too as we only do term time for free.

The nursery have to allow you to do 15 hours free in term time, but it is up to them how they organise it.

Rita they are offering me Tues and Thurs morning sessions which last from 7.30am -1.30pm but claim that they work it out as 3hours of free entitlement per day - I would have to pay for the remaining 3 hours. But I've calculated that they are charging an inflated rate for those three hours that they are charging me anyway. That sounds to me like a 'top up' option which they are expressly forbidden from doing.
In practical terms my DD attends from 9am until 1.30 anyway which I am happy to formalise. I have just e-mailed them suggesting they claim 10 hours of funding from the LA for my two days and I will happily cover the extra hour a day and school holidays....will wait and see how they respond. Thanks for your thoughts....

I would tell them that you just want the free hours and remind them that they can't charge top-ups, and see what they suggest. Would you be able to just take the free 3 hours on Tues and Thurs?

I don't know - am assuming no as they keep reiterating their sessions last from 7.30am until 1.30pm. Will def ask.

In our local agreement the free hours have to be between 8am and 6pm, so starting at 7:30 might be a way they are using to get round it. It does sound like they are trying to squeeze money out of parents when they really shouldn't be. Do you have a copy of your local agreement (should be available from the council) to look up their exact rules?

(In the new EYFS it might be that the hours are changed to 7am to 7pm but that would be from September.)

So glad I found this. My private nursery told me that the government only gives them £3.5hr and I would have to top up the additional amount. I therefore applied to school nurseries and hopefully will get my 1st choice. But I may still need to put him into private nursery before he starts state nursery I. Jan. armed with this info I can now talk to my nursery and stay there longer if need be without their ridiculous fees (a day rate is £68). Thanks ladies

ewaczarlie - I think the government rate is £3.77 now and in NO circumstances are they allowed to charge a top up (ie charge the difference between £3.77 and £5ph).

Private nurseries are not private in the same way as an independant school. The only reason they are private is becasue they have an owner who makes profit rather than a management committee who run the business as a charity. School nurseries can be slightly different depending on whether they are properly linked with the school or not.

Please contact your local authority to check this, it may vary from LA to LA but I am assuming not!

dita - are they averaging for the year? free care is only for 38 weeks per year - if your child attends all year then that sounds about right as they've averaged it. My dd went to nursery 2 full days 8-5.30. I only saved £100 per months once free care came in as a nursery day was 9.5 hours and 52 weeks not 38?

dita - if your child is doing 2 x 6 hours per week then they are only getting half of that free. However your fees wont reduce by half as you are likely paying for 52 weeks not 38. DOes that make sense - your reduction in fees sounds right if you have an all year round place