Nursery school Fines

A_Wardell

I received a fine from the nursery school today because I collected my child 37 minutes late on Wednesday lunchtime.
£74 for 37 minutes!!!
Unfortunately I was in the middle of our Companies VAT submissions on Wednesday and yes, it slipped my mind to collect my daughter at 2.30pm. The school phoned me at about 2.59 to remind me. I immediately made a plan to have my father go collect her. This morning I received a bill for £74 because we were 37 mins late.
I would understand a charge if it was the end of the day and the teachers were waiting to go home, or if there was children waiting to enter the nursery school establishment and due to my child still being there and the staff / child ratios meant they had to wait for my child to be collected before they could let another one in...
The usual price for the 5hour session is £19.95.
Am I the only one who thinks that the charge is excessive?! For £74 my child could have another 3 (almost 4) half day sessions!
If I had been sat at home watching a soap and simply forgot to collect her I would understand, but the fact that i was at work, trying to earn money to feed my family, i would expect them to be abit more accommodating! I would have accepted to pay the cost of a dedicated member of staff for the 37 minutes or something reasonable.
I work 24 hours a week to fit in around school runs and children's education, but that fine is almost HALF of what I earned this ENTIRE week!
Is this excessive fine legal?
Regards
Ashley

Guest101

What does your contract say?

Alter_ego

Only the courts and councils can issue fines. Check it's not a contractual charge that you have agreed to.

Guest101

Alter_ego wrote: »

Only the courts and councils can issue fines. Check it's not a contractual charge that you have agreed to.

Actually only courts.


Councils (and police) and other bodies issue what are in essence alternatives to prosecution.

susancs

The fee for late collection is excessive, but often Nursery schools have this excessive late collection fee clause built into their contracts in an attempt to deter late collections. Some nurseries will charge the whole session rate, if for example a morning session falls into the afternoon session and if your child's fees are subsidised by the 15 hours a week nursery grant during the initial session, this will mean you are paying full rates for the second session. Some Nurseries have a policy whereby if a child is not collected by a certain time and no contact has been made by the parents (plus they cannot get hold of emergency contacts) that they contact social services for advice. This is usually built into their child safeguarding policies.

As you say it may be that your child staying on after 2.30pm meant that a staff who was contracted to work until 2.30pm had to stay due to staff/child ratios not being met as your child put them 1 over ratio at that point of the day. Some "team around the child" meetings with other professionals for chidlren and families may be arranged on the basis that a staff member will be available to attend from 2.30pm when ratios are such to allow this. Some staff also, like you work hours to fit in with their children's school hours and may need to leave at 2.30pm to drive to collect their child, so the knock on effect is their child is late collected. Staff might have a second job that starts shortly after e.g. in an after school club and a late collection means they are late for this job.

If your child has been in the nursery for a reasonable amount of time and this was the first late collection, it might be worth asking to see the person in charge to see if you can get the charge reduced down. If you are really nice and very apologetic for this one off incident and explain that paying the fee would cause you financial hardship it might even be waived.

Savvy_Sue

I used to run out of school clubs, and was aware of various discussions about late fees in this and similar situations.

The problem is that if you don't make, in effect, an excessive charge then parents think "oh, it will only cost me an extra tenner if I'm an hour late, I might as well not worry."

You do need to check what your contract says, and you could ask nicely if they will consider reducing the charge on this occasion. But the other thing you could do is set an alarm on your phone for 10 minutes before you need to leave work to pick your DD up!

[Deleted User]

Yup, I can at times have no sense of time passing and I have an alarm that runs weekdays on my phone to give me plenty of time to collect my YS from school. It really does work.

TBagpuss

You will need to read your contract with the nursery to discover whether it is legal, but it seems unlikely that they would have billed you if it isn't covered in their terms.

I don't know how they normally charge - do they normally charge by the hour or do they charge per day / half day? It may be that you have been charged for an extra session, plus a surcharge for being late.
As susancs says, the nursery may have had to ask a staff member to stay late to cover, and if so, may have had to pay them overtime rates.

Many businesses have surcharges for situations when people don't keep to the terms, partly to make up for the extra work and hassle, and partly to discourage people from breaking the rules.

If you have previously have good relationship and good record with the nursery then you could ask them nicely whether they are willing to discount it.

If you speak to them then I'd suggest that you focus on apologising, and stressing that you will ensure it doesn't happen again; I would not raise the issue that you were working to support your family - so are most parents, and certainly the staff of the nursery are. It doesn't really make any difference to them why you were late, so unless it was a real emergency (in the "I was rushed to hospital" or "my car was totaled" class) I wouldn't make a big thing of that.

Robin-o'-the-Hood

Little bit off topic but my work colleague used to grumble like hell because the after school club his son went to used to charge the full session rate for his kiddie even though he only used a part of the time he could have. To me that makes no difference whatsoever. The staff and facilities still have to be provided. (The same person would be sure to claim half an hour's overtime if he were literally 2 minutes after finish time when he got back to depot!)

onlyroz

I've been charged late fees by our after-school club on a handful of occasions due to bad traffic. They charge £10 per fifteen minutes, and I've got no problems paying this because I understand that the club has insurance issues if they stay open after 6pm, and the staff themselves have homes that they want to get back to.

unholyangel

OP, unfair terms guidance may provide useful to you:

Part 1 of Schedule 2 states that the following may be unfair:
(6) A term which has the object or effect of requiring a consumer who
fails to fulfil his obligations under the contract to pay a
disproportionately high sum in compensation.


5.14.1 It is unfair to impose disproportionate sanctions for breach of contract. A
requirement to pay more in compensation for a breach than a reasonable
pre-estimate of the loss caused to the trader is one kind of sanction that is
liable to be considered disproportionate. Such a requirement may be void
to the extent that it amounts to a penalty under English common law.
However, (as the courts have recognised)
99 a term may still be considered
unfair independently of the common law, if it has a penal purpose or effect.
Other types of disproportionate sanction are considered in paragraphs
5.15.1 to 5.15.7 below

They can't impose a financial penalty no matter what the T&C's say, they are void (and therefore unenforceable) under english & scots law. You are liable for any reasonable costs they incurred as a result of your breach, but they can't inflate that sum or profit from the breach. However if this hasn't been a one off, you may find this is the accumulation of their actual losses in which case, they would be entitled to claim it.

Although I would also point out that some people can struggle to find a good nursery and if you are in that position, you may want to think twice before kicking the hornets nest.