Hi Secur, haven't read all the posts so sorry if I repeat. Nannies are, at the moment, unregulated ie there is no law concerning how many children at what ages she can care for. This would presumably be different if she registered as a childminder working in your home. Having said that, this might change next year, if you want to take advantage of changes to the law on tax and nannies. At the moment you can use child-care vouchers to pay for childcare and there is a tax advantage to doing so. Currently this scheme does not extend to nannies. However, next spring they will extend it to nannies - but I am not sure how this will work in practice - presumably it will entail some form of registration for the nanny, which might (and I really don't know) bring with it stricter regulation. There's a websire which is somethinglike childcarevouchers.co.uk which shold explain. In any case - the changes will bring the cost of having a nanny down. (I think the govt have woken up to the fact that a nanny is not the perogative of lazy rich people who get them to look after their children while they shop in Harvey Nics, but is actually a widely used form of childcare for working people with 2 or more kids...)must go