15 'free' nursery hours not free?

square_one_2014

Hi,

Our son has turned 3 so from September we're using our 15 hours entitlement as follows:
2 x 2.5 hours sessions at a pre-school in a church building
2 x 5 hours sessions at a private nursery (already attends)

The pre-school is term-time and the nursery all year round.

I understand the 15 hours is funded for 38 weeks per year. The pre-school wants a small contribution towards snacks / occasional events etc but the hours are funded.

However, the private nursery has issued us with a revised monthly bill from September which we queried. Instead of us paying for the 14 weeks which are not funded divided by 12 we are also getting charged £1.06 per hour for the 'free' funded hours for the other 38 weeks of the year.

They charge £5 per hour but the funding amount is £3.94 per hour according to the nursery manager.

Is this allowed?

(we have never had a specific charge separately for lunch for instance - it is just described as a 5 hour morning session for £25)

moomoomama27

Yes they can if the hourly charge is more than the funding. It's normal to be asked to pay for snacks, and if a daily full session, a lunch fee.

jjj1980

Sounds right. My daughter's pre-school bill was reduced by the 15 hours a week grant but I still pay towards those sessions as the hourly charge is higher than the grant.

Gillyx

Sounds about right, in my area the funding is £3.19 an hour and you can be asked to top up.

square_one_2014

Thanks, it would have been helpful to have been given a bit more info from the nursery in the first place about how they did it.

I think I probably preferred it when lunch and snack time was charged separately - the old private nursery we used had a specific £1 for snacks and £2 for lunch per session.

I expected the church pre-school to charge for the extra bits & pieces anyway.

Mrs_Soup

Must depend on where you live as our pre school charges £5 an hour but we pay nothing for the funded hours. I pay only for the 6 additional hours a week my son does.

an9i77

We top up £16 per day for food, and only get one day (10 hours) free per week, but this is throughout the whole year so equates to 38 weeks of 15 hours (apparently)

freebiequennie

If you only use the free hrs they cannot charge any extra for that time however if your child attends more than the free hrs they can deduct the funded amount from full bill.

Some places allow you to use 15hrs over 2days some say 12hrs over 2 days as 2 x 3hrs sessions on each day and others say 5 sessions of 3hrs over 5 days.

We actually only use 12hrs of ours as attends nursery 2 days and childminder 2 days childminder doesn't offer funded place. Nursery deduct 12hrs of funded hrs per wk term time from invoice doesn't save a huge amount but still saves something.

freebiequennie

an9i77 wrote: »

We top up £16 per day for food, and only get one day (10 hours) free per week, but this is throughout the whole year so equates to 38 weeks of 15 hours (apparently)

Another nursery I looked at for pre school year (was having issues with current nursery) does this and let's you use funded hrs over 2 days as well and then averages it out over the year so Bill is same each month

betsie

I work as an administrator at a pre-school and funded hours should be completely free and you can not charge any extra top up fees or admin fees. We charge a resource payment each term to cover snack but once a child is funded we can only request this payment we can not force parents to pay it.

If you do extra hours at the nursery then obviously they can charge for this. I would check with your local council but I thought the same rules applied nationwide. We were told by our local council to inform parents that funded places were free and no additional charges could be made.

*Diva*

could anyone explain what the criteria is in order to qualify for the free hours please