Nursery fees

Most nurseries will charge a fee on top of the funded hours as they don’t cover the cost. If you ask them for a breakdown, they should be able to send it to you. My son goes 3 days a week and with the funded hours we still pay £800 a month. But that’s a private nursery. Usually ones attached to schools are cheaper

Probably important to add that we have been given a code which I have given to her nursery when she starts in September but we are planning to go with a different nursery as we unfortunately need childcare asap, is there going to be a problem with me changing the nursery after already giving them the code?

Depends on how I they give you the fees, but it will usually specifies with or without funding. If it doesn’t it’s likely fully private. I would just ask!

And there is a cut off to switch I think, as they have to apply to the gov for the funding using your code. But if you let them know soon enough it shouldn’t be an issue.

No, not at all. The code is so they can allocate the funding correctly as they'll get a monthly payment from the government with a total and a coded breakdown of how much per code

I used Chat GPT to get a full breakdown of what nursery fees will look like for me and my personal situation

Every nursery is different.

I would send yours an email and ask for it explained. It can be very confusing.

But do not forget - you get 20% back with the government childcare tax free. On the government website, make a gateway account, you pay in your nursery fee each month (minus the 20% tax) and the government top it up, then you can pay your childcare provider from there.

Probably haven’t explained it the best, but people get caught out on this & miss out on the savings! X

They claim the funding a term at a time. If you've given the code but she hasn't started yet they won't have claimed anything.

We do 3 days a week with 30 hours funded and tax free childcare and it still costs us just under £500 x

My girls go 9-3 everyday to use the 30 hours funding, I pay £35 a month for each of them as it’s like £2 something a day for snacks and consumables. There’s another nursery tha if I did the same hours I wouldn’t have to pay nothing as they don’t charge fr snacks or consumables x