Can a council nursery delay a funded start date in Scotland?

[Strangesally20]

We’re in Scotland. My 3 year old son has been granted his 30 hours funded nursery hours and we have accepted a place at a council run nursery which is attached to the school which my daughter attends. Funding starts at the beginning of term, which is today, daughter has returned to school today. The nursery is opened today but they want DS (and I assume other new starts) to start on the 19th.

this has caused a huge amount of stress for us. This was only communicated on the last day of term and we had already given notice to our private childcare provider to end for a start date of today. Like most families the summer holidays required a lot of juggling with me and my DH using our annual leave/ parental leave to cover. We booked all this on the basis of both children starting at the beginning of term so we now have no childcare for the next week and I will likely have to take unpaid parental leave while the nursery receives his funding. There’s also a settle in period which is based on how the child tolerates it starting at one hour, then 2 hours and so on so really I have no idea how long this will take. Would I be within my rights to challenge this start date?

I should also add to not drop feed. DH is having a surgery tomorrow which has purposely been delayed until both kids were back at nursery/school. He’s not likely to be particularly unwell but it is known for being an incredibly painful surgery so he absolutely will need time to recover for the next week and won’t be able to do as much as he regularly would in terms of childcare if any at all.

By the time you’ve challenged it and it’s gone through the motions it’ll be the 19th anyway.

I doubt you’ll get anywhere unfortunately; this may just be their system for a new intake to give existing children time to settle back in before new starts arrive and take up more staff time, and it’s likely that’s just how it runs every year. They also may not have staffing numbers until the 19th.

The issue seems to be that you weren’t aware of it when you needed to be, which you can maybe feed back to them for the future, but I doubt at this late point you’ll be able to change their dates when the term is now underway.

If they let you know on the last day of term, they may ask why you chose to wait until today to challenge it. Unless I've got that wrong. It may be that people who came back and said no got an earlier start date. They are likely doing staggered starts and assumed you had no issue with it.

I think you’d be within your rights to challenge. I know my local school has changed to everyone all at once for the full time after parents refused staggered starts. They started them two at a time for a half day by age so my eldest ( who was youngest) missed out on first week and a half and then a week of mornings only. Absolute pita.

Yeah I kind of understand they may want to stagger the settles but it’s really getting under my skin that I’m going to be out of pocket when they are currently receiving funding for him to attend. As far as I’m aware this is the only council nursery in our area who does this, everywhere else they started today so I feel if everywhere else can manage to settle them in then they should be able to.

The last day of term was when they told us the start date would be the 19th. Then it closed for the summer holidays and opened on monday as staff only, children returned today. I phoned many times on Monday and Tuesday and no one answered the phone.

I’d contact the council and be clear that they aren’t offering the place, incase the nursery says they are offering but you’ve not taken up!

they CANNOT claim the funding if they aren’t offering it