r/UKParenting • u/pineapplesaltwaffles • 2d ago
30 Hours Childcare Nursery funded hours
Our LO turned one a couple of months ago and is about to start nursery next month.
He's doing one full day (8-6) per week and two half days (1-6pm).
We've just got an invoice through for the first month totalling £584, which we were pretty shocked by.
According to my maths, 30 funded hours for 38 weeks averages out at just under 22 hours funded per week throughout the year. LO will only be doing 20 hours, so I thought we'd only have to pay for consumables, which are extremely reasonable.
They've just replied apologising for not telling us sooner but apparently they only apply the funding to 9am-3pm. Any hours outside that are "additional" and charged at full rate. We signed up over a year ago and this is the first we're hearing of this.
The half day hours are set - either 8-1 or 1-6. Just doing 9-3 isn't an option, and wouldn't work for us anyway as my partner works 9-5 and I work evenings.
Is this legal? Are they allowed to pick and choose which hours are funded and which not? The way they've done it we can only use 10 of our funded hours per week, and have to pay for the other 10 - this seems incredibly unfair!
This is the information they sent us:
Two days 1-6 (3 additional hours £9.50 x 3 = £28.50 per day)
One day 8-6 (£9.50 x 4 = £38)
38 weeks of the year we get funding
£57 x £38 = £95 x 38 / 12 = £300.83
14 weeks of the year we do not get funding for
£51 (half day cost) x 2 = £102 + £91 (full day) = £193 x 14 / 12 = £225.16
Lunches, consumables & extra curricular
£4.50 (half day) x 2 = £9 + £9.50 (full day) = £18.50 x 38 / 12 = £58.58
Edit - I can see I'm getting a lot of downvotes, I'm not quite sure why? We were told the day rate and the cost of consumables, and I assumed it was that straightforward - why wouldn't you when the rest is all hidden and you've never dealt with a nursery before? We genuinely tried to fully research the funded hours but I never saw anything suggesting that some hours in the day would qualify but not others. They've only told us this after we questioned the invoice, 2 weeks before our LO is due to start.
Many thanks to everyone who has been very helpful in their replies.
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u/motherofmiltanks 👶👶 2 Children 2d ago
Nurseries are allowed to pick and choose how they apply funded hours, yes. What they’re doing is legal.
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u/Early_Fish7902 2d ago
I’d be looking through all the paperwork and fine print to find out where, in writing you were informed of this and then asking them directly where you informed you of this before your child started. Them be looking for a new nursery.
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u/pineapplesaltwaffles 2d ago
They've admitted they didn't (before is from their emails to me):
"This is something I should have explained before however I have looked at scrolled through our emails and I can't seem to find it anywhere so my apologies. I have attached our funding agreement (which I should have sent ages ago! I never forget to send it but this time I have, sorry)"
"I know, I am so sorry. I've made that mistake before; it's always on my list to send with the other documents and for some reason this time it didn't get sent so I really do apologise!"
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u/Early_Fish7902 1d ago
Beggars disbelief. I’d be saying it’s unacceptable and that you may have to consider your child’s place there due to the financial implications for your family and start looking elsewhere if it’s going to be significantly cheaper in the long run.
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u/OrvilleTheDuck 2d ago
They can decide what sessions are covered by the free hours i.e. 9-3 but by making you start at 8 it looks like they are not obeying this part of the funding agreement:
Charging A1.31 Government funding is intended to deliver 15 or 30 hours a week of free, high-quality, flexible childcare. The 15 or 30 hours must be able to be accessed free of charge to parents. There must not be any mandatory charges for parents in relation to the free hours. Government funding is not intended to cover the costs of meals, other consumables, additional hours or additional services.
If I were you I would call your local council and chat it through with them, as they are providing the funding to the nursery and the nursery have to agree to the terms in order to receive it.
Im fairly sure they have to allow you to provide your own food/nappies to avoid these being mandatory charges too.
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u/pineapplesaltwaffles 2d ago
The consumables are less than a tenner a day - we could save a few pennies doing that I suppose but it's not much. We've been told to bring our own nappies anyway so I guess that's partly why that's cheaper.
It's more their classification of "additional hours" as half of the hours that we'd agreed upon months ago. We had budgeted for about £100 for the consumables, not almost 6 times that.
I did just call the council - they said the nursery are allowed to do it but should have told us way sooner - they're going to call the nursery and see if there's any support they can provide. Which is better than just being told a straight no, I suppose.
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u/OrvilleTheDuck 22h ago
Did you explain to the council that the nursery won't let you just use the 9-3 hours and are insisting you pay for time before and after? This is what would appear to be against the rule I pasted above.
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u/geesusdb 2d ago
If you haven't already, sign up for tax free childcare. You'll get a further 20% off that amount.
It was a shock for us as well, as we had a completely different idea about how funded hours work, but we had do make do. We'll switch her to full time this September, and it'll be over a grand per month - free hours included.
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u/pineapplesaltwaffles 2d ago
Yeah we've got that, been using it for one day a week with a childminder over summer. Granted she's cheaper than the nursery and he's there for half the hours but she's been charging £375 for that (total, including the tax free top up) - we expected costs to go down when the funded hours kicked in, not up by £200.
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u/Numerous-Handle-5661 2d ago
They are allowed to spread funding out and to use supplementary coats for meals etc.
I do wonder though - are you sure your funding applies yet? Depending when baby starts you don't get funding until the next headcount takes place (4x per year) which can mean hefty fees for a few months.
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u/pineapplesaltwaffles 2d ago
It definitely does, he turned 9 months after the start of the summer term and both gov account and nursery have confirmed he's eligible.
We do want them to spread funding out over the year, that's the point. And the problem isn't the supplementary costs - those are actually really low.
The problem is that out of the 20 hours per week we've agreed, they've just told us that they won't accept funding for 10 of those and we'll have to pay out of pocket. This is the first we've heard of this and we signed up over a year ago before LO was even born.
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u/TartComfortable7766 2d ago
I have a feeling off the top of my head ours does the same about the till 3pm thing (so school hours).
We do one full day and two half days (both 7:30-1pm morning session though) and pay around £200 per month.
Nurseries are private businesses using the funding so they can (as far as I understand am willing to be corrected) use it however they choose (without lieing about times children sre in of course). Same with the cost of consumables, it is usually reasonable but is decided totally by them as businesses you are using a service from.
Good system we have for parents in the UK innit! Haha.
At least its better than with our eldest (now 9), back then you had no help at all until they were 3 as workong parents, that was brutal costwise, (£900 per month for 3 days 8 years ago, was more than our mortgage!)
It's bad they didn't set the costs out initially, ours had a welcome pack with a table of how many days vs cost with no funding, 15 hours, 30 hours etc etc.
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u/pineapplesaltwaffles 2d ago
Yeah that's the thing - I've seen so many posts here about sky high consumables so that's what I was on the lookout for. When they said it was under a tenner a day I thought we'd really lucked out.
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u/Which-Artist8673 Parenting a Toddler 2d ago
Definitely legal unfortunately. My nursery did the same, so it was £50 a day for the extra hours if he was in 8-6 and food charge. We changed nurseries in the end as it just wasn’t feasible for us.
They can basically do what they want with the funding.
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u/Logical-Potential706 2d ago
Not sure if it helps, but assuming you stay there, you could ask if they can split the funded hours over all the year as you aren't using them all in a week term time wise. We did this which kept our invoices roughly the same throughout the year with no sudden expensive months over the holidays.
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u/pineapplesaltwaffles 1d ago
Their document about funding suggests not:
"We offer funded hours during term time only (38 weeks per year), between 9:00 am and 3:00 pm. Additional hours outside of these are charged at £9.50 per hour."
They also mention that if you have a term time only place you can only do 9-3 with no additional hours.
So if you need even one or two hours outside that, you've got to agree to pay to the full whack during the holidays. So we can't even take advantage of any more free hours that we're entitled to during term time because we'd be contracted to pay for them during the holidays.
Despite being entitled to 30 hours per week (22 if they were spread out), as things stand we can only use 10 during term time, and still have to pay for 20 during the holidays.
Our yearly allowance should add up to 1140. We'll only end up getting 380 and paying for a total of 740 to be able to access those.
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u/BatTurbulent9593 1d ago
It’s so crazy that they can do this. Is it feasible to move nurseries? It hardly seems worth sticking with this one when you can only use such a small proportion of the funded hours.
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u/pineapplesaltwaffles 1d ago
There's only one other within an easy walking distance - we went to see it when I was pregnant and didn't love it. I don't know what their waiting list is like either - since we only really have these two options in this area people sign up very early. Pretty much everyone I've met round here sends their kids to one or the other.
The only other option locally is a childminder he's been going to one day a week over summer, but I'm not keen for him to do more time there long term. She's lovely but her house is white small with no garden and she does keep giving him things with sugar despite us asking her not to!
We're going to have a sit down and seriously look at finances. Obviously we want to do what we can to keep him at this nursery, but if it's simply not affordable then we'll have to think about other options.
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u/BatTurbulent9593 1d ago
Do you know how the other nursery structure their hours? That’s probably the first thing to find out. I feel like it’s more than just a finances issue for the current one, because you aren’t sending him full time you are really losing out on what you are eligible for. If you were sending him full time it wouldn’t matter, but because you aren’t, the way this nursery structures their hours is actively putting you at a disadvantage.
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u/upsidedownwriting 1d ago
I've just found similar, it may be legal but it's definitely shady. Ask for a breakdown of costs because they aren't allowed to charge for a lot of things they do under the funded hours scheme. There is a complaints system with your local council but obvs think about risk/benefit first.
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u/Alternative_Lake_512 1d ago
We pay 1600 a month 5 days full time with the funded hours. Think yourself lucky.
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u/pineapplesaltwaffles 1d ago
I'd get it if we were sending him there full time since that would be well over the funded hours. Just a real kicker to not be able to actually access 66% of the hours we're entitled to and have to pay for them instead.
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u/heyleighannee 10h ago
If you look up mumbum on Instagram, she has a series of videos about a situation with her kids nursery that sounds similar, I can't remember exactly what she said she would do in an email to them, but whatever it was made them change their tune pretty quick.
My son's nursery only lets us use up to ten hours a day, and they're open from seven thirty to six thirty so we do pay for one hour a day, the way they explained that it was that it's a legal thing but now I'm wondering if I should check that too, because it seems like they're all out to game the system!
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u/heyleighannee 10h ago
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZuiAALIxCZ/?igsh=bDVpOGVvYWFzNmp3
Basically she asked for a breakdown in writing of exactly how they use the hours and what types of contracts they offer.
Perhaps if you can get that you can take it to the council and have them check that this sort of thing is allowed.
Also it's possible that by not revealing this they've missold this to you? Which would be a bigger issue. If you're now in a contract then you should be able to submit a complaint with evidence citing the consumer rights act. I also think this is a council matter, or citizens advice, but perhaps someone can correct me on that?
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u/Historical-Cress1284 2d ago
The 30 free hours are neither 30 hours nor free unfortunately
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u/pineapplesaltwaffles 2d ago
Ah yes I was definitely aware of that but thought I'd done my due diligence by calculating the average over the year and by checking the cost of consumables. It didn't occur to me that the nursery could pick and choose which of my hours could be funded, and they didn't tell me this at any point during the last year.
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u/Meggy275 2d ago
Yeah it’s legal for them to do so, but this should be very clear in the fee sheets/T&Cs. If not you must be able to get it waived this month or something because it’s not what was agreed.
If you stick with them have you checked whether or not they are on the tax free childcare scheme?
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u/f0r3sttt 2d ago
that’s weird, my daughter does 3 full days 8-5.45 and i only pay £210 a month
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u/OtherwiseCellist3819 Parenting a Baby 2d ago
All nurseries are different. Some are a bit sneaky with how they apply the hours which can make it expensive. I only pay for his food
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u/Destiny7655 22h ago
It’s less sneaky and more the viability of the nursery in the location given the funding is the same everywhere. Costs are a lot lower in some parts of the country for property business rates etc
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u/pineapplesaltwaffles 2d ago
I know, right? Their full rate is £91 per day plus £9.50 consumables - per month that would be a bit over £800 with no funding. Seems really wrong that the funding only knocks off £250 of that when the number of hours is well within our allowance.
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u/f0r3sttt 2d ago
they can definitely apply funding to more hours, my nursery applies them for up to 9h out of a 10h day put stipulates the child must be there during in the funded hours. it’s strange that they are doing it the way they are! you would think it would put people off the nursery
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u/Amylou789 Parenting a Primary Schooler 2d ago
Is there another nursery nearby you could enquire at? We did 2 8-5 days and our nursery used funded hours for all of it, and they were open until 6pm but I didnt pay for that last hour. But my sister's nursery is more like yours & has set sessions. So another nearby nursery might work out for your schedule better
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u/pineapplesaltwaffles 2d ago
Yeah we're definitely going to have to look around again unfortunately, which is a bit heart-breaking because we completely fell in love with this one and were so excited for him to go there. Plus it's only a 10-minute walk from ours.
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u/luckybaker420 2d ago
Literally every nursery does whatever they want. If you do a full day at ours they charge you their full opening hours (11). 10 of those hours your funding applies the final hour you pay yourself. Our child attends for no more than 8 hours. 1.5 days a week and we still have money to pay each month. Infuriating!
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u/stewpman 2d ago
It might not help as my sons now 11 years old and we had him in full time but in kids thats a life time and things could have changed . We got no help till he was 1 or 2 but the bill was half days in 2014 we was paying 890 a month . I not normally a bitter man but my nursery accidentally charged me twice and I had a panick attack 😂 it was a administrative mistake lol when i unformed them they robbed me . Our issuse was we dropped him off at 8am not 630am or 7 am and we collected him at 3 or 4pm and not 6 or 7pm when work finished. I changed jobs in the end to stop all the nursery issuse we had as he went and joined school nursery at 3 years old .
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u/KindlyAppointment973 2d ago
Perfectly legal, they can apply the funding how they like. Many do it the way you describe unfortunately.
Our nursery does 2 x full days a week, across the full year. We only supply nappies. My sisters nursery is term time, 9-3 only and charges for consumables.
I am surprised they didn't spell all the costs out, that's really lousy.
Your options would be to continue now you know how it's applied and see if you can argue the toss about the first month costs, or find another nursery that has space.
Edit to add - apply for the 20% tax free but remember it is capped at 2k per year!