Nursery Fees - COVID Refund

BUCKSBW

I have come into a situation where my 22 month old daughter who goes to Nursery full time (Monday to Friday) caught COVID whilst there was an outbreak at her nursery. The nursery was never closed. She is in the toddler section and that remained open however, some departments like the baby section or the Pre-school section were.

We paid the December invoice on 29/11/2021 - we are always early payers and never like to be owing money to the nursery. Typically our daughter was sent home from nursery on 30/11 due to her having a high temperature and the nursery taking extra careful measures and was not allowed back until she had a negative PCR result. A PCR test was taken that day and it came back positive the following day (01/12). Our daughter had to self isolate and obviously could not attend nursery until she had completed her 10 days. Her first day back was 13/12. Unfortunately we were in a situation where if we didn't send our daughter to nursery we would lose out on fees to keep her place but she went to nursery and was unfortunate enough to catch it and we are in a position where we are losing a lot of money. 

The nursery is now not issuing us with a credit or refund for the time our daughter was off with COVID and we are losing just short of £600.00 due to this. The nursery terms and conditions state that children can return back to nursery within 48 hours if they have had a sickness bug, diarrhoea or any infectious illness. The T&Cs were signed back in August 2020 and we have not had to sign any further documents relating to COVID. The T&Cs state if the child is off on holiday then we have to continue to pay the fees whilst the child is on holiday. But back to COVID and sickness there is nothing against long periods of sickness, COVID or not.

We are arguing the case with the nursery in hope to receive a credit back as this was a lot of money to lose out right before Christmas. We were also at a loss for getting extra supplies that we have already paid the nursery for.

I was hoping for some advice or potentially point me in the right direction for help if we have a leg to stand on to argue this?

[Deleted User]

You have no legs at all. The nursery is open if the child is able/willing to attend - there are no discounts offered for sickness.

What are these extra supplies you mention?

BUCKSBW

Deleted_User said:

You have no legs at all. The nursery is open if the child is able/willing to attend - there are no discounts offered for sickness.

What are these extra supplies you mention?

extra supplies for food and nappies for example - not that is was problem of course!

onashoestring

The nursery would also loose money if it had to refund every time a child is sick . It still has to pay for the premises, staff costs , utility bills, business tax etc.I cannot see that you are entitled to claim a refund from them .

As the parent of a child who had to self- isolate you may be entitled to a £500 *Test and Trace support payment. You apply to your local
council  but you need to do this quickly ( you must apply within 42 days after the first day of isolation ) Check your local authority website.

£500 applies in England (Test and Trace support payment)
£750 Wales  ( self- isolation payment ) 
£500 Scotland ( self-isolation support grant )

sheramber

self isolation after a positive test is a legal requirement which over rides any terms and conditions the nursery may have.

If your daughter had attended nursery you would still have paid the fees so the money would have ben spent and you wouldnl't have had it, so you have not 'lost' it You just didn't get anything for it apart from keeping the nursery place.

elsien

If you’ve already paid the nursery for nappies etc then surely they’d be sitting there waiting till your daughter goes back and is able to use them? 

Lllllli

I Don't think you will get your money back,  when my son was younger he went to a private nursery and I still had to pay if he was off sick,  the only way to pay less is to give notice of any day's she won't be there eg, if you have any day's off work or if you are taking holiday day's then tell the nursery she won't be in on they days (unless you wanted to still send her) as you should only pay for what you have booked,  so they can give these days to someone else if they are free.

CovKid_4

I know it's hard to see the money go, but if the nursery had a policy like you describe, it's quite likely they wouldn't be able to cover their costs and they'd have to close. Margins on childcare are really small and many providers struggle to cover costs. Agree you should look into self-isolation payments.