Nursery fees
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My nursery didn’t do that and I’d be annoyed if they did. I do understand and sympathise with the position they’re in with the free hrs but I doing think it’s fair to charge you for something you weren’t paying for before.
I understand paying for the food on the funded days but not for the days you're paying full. My daughter goes nursery, I've not received that invoice yet, I will ask them on Monday
I haven’t received my invoice yet, but I would check my contract because it usually says what’s included on full paying day/half days, ie food, diapers, formula, sunscreen
Pretty standard, you either provide a pack lunch or you pay for a meal, the money you pay just about covers supplies, wages, and things like insurance, when we signed my daughter up the funding covered everything even nappies and wipes and then they had to close due to Covid so to make some more money they started charging for nappies and wipes as well as food
Are you sure the daily fee you were quoted ever included food? Some nurseries split the cost out, mine does not so the £72 per day includes food. But I've seen other examples where you can add food on for an amount per day.
Maybe just check the invoice with the nursery!
The government allowance often doesn’t cover the rate that the nursery charge. For example, if it’s £9 per hour, the government give them £6, so they need to make up £3 to cover their usual rate. But they’re not supposed to charge this “top up” so have to have other ways that it’s listed on invoices. In this case, they “charge for food” to make up their rate. But they can’t show that they only charge you on the “free days”, their reporting has to show that its standard across all the days that you attend. There’s a lot of reporting back to the council/government on their side. If you were to add up what you pay in total for a week and divide it across your hours for that week (excluding the 15 free hours), then you’ll probably see that it does all match up correctly. Hope that makes sense 🤪
@Daisy I'm not disputing paying for food on the days I receive funding. If you reread what I put, it's the days I don't receive funding where I will pay the full daily fee that I have been charged for food ontop, where previously pre funded it was all included
@Katie Yes her nursery fee has always included all food and consumables, I'll probably just query again
@Victoria I think I will, I wasn't sure if I was being picky but I'm already paying £65 a day so it makes it £69 now, it'll be an extra £30 a month otherwise
Sadly the ‘free’ hours barely cover the rate so they have to make up some cost somewhere… which will be why you’re now paying for food on all the days Rightly or wrongly I understand why nurseries do it this way!