Help with Nursery fees?

It’s going to 15 hours a week free for over 9 month olds from Sept 2024, then extending to 30 hours in April 2025. It’ll be for 38 weeks of the year, so check with the nursery you’re looking at how they are working it and whether they offer funded places!

If you search gov uk childcare calculator you can put your info in and it tells you what support you may qualify for. X

Also apply for this -

https://www.gov.uk/tax-free-childcare

Xx

Perfect! My friend works at the nursery we are looking at sending my little girl and she said they accept funded places! I’ll defiantly have a look at this. My hours are also changing at work (used to be 39 hours a week, will be going down to 24) in regards to filling out the form, should I put the hours I will be working from when my maternity ends? Sorry it probably seems like such a basic question!

that’s a good point cause I’m also dropping my hours I didn’t think of that! But yes I would’ve thought so x

We get 15 hours free from September x

One thing to be aware of is that the ‘free’ hours coming in, may not actually be free hours. Many nurseries are saying that they cannot provide the care for funding they are given by the government. They are now starting to use the term ‘funded’ rather than free as you may need to contribute on top of the funded hours, this will be dependent on the individual nurseries prices. It will still be a lot cheaper, ours for example will be £7 a session (morn or aft), so £14 on top of the funded for a full days care

The nursery we are going to have said the 15 'free hours' equates to 5.5 hours a day. We are sending our daughter 2 days so will use 11 of the 15 free hours. Funded places therefore are 5.5 hours a day also so could send a child for three days roughly 5.5 hours each day

Not sure if the hours you work have any influence. I didn't have to put my work hours down. If you are applying for funded care might be different though

@Lucy I believe this is due to them spreading the hours. The free places are for 15 hours a week, 38 weeks a year. If your childcare provider has space, you may be able to stretch your hours over more weeks, eg 11 hours over 48 weeks x

Your best place to visit is childcarechoices.gov.uk.

This will tell you what funding you can access and when.

You can get a tax free childcare account as well when you pay 80% of your childcare bill into and the government tops up the other 20% and it gets transferred to your chosen nurseries. Most nurseries accept the scheme.