Childcare Advice

[LottieLoo1]

Hi

My soon to be three year old qualified for '30 hours free' childcare.

Our nursery have just sent us a breakdown of costs and have stated that we would need to pay £380 pcm on top of the 30 hours.

I feel like this is very high and this would actually make us worse off financially than before the 30 hours.

We currently receive Universal Credit that pays 85% of our nursery costs, will we still get UC help when we get our 30 hours or is it one or the other?

Thank you

[Tilly2]

How many hours does your child spend at nursery in a week?

[LottieLoo1]

Hi Tilly

She currently is 30 hours, we plan to keep it that way.

Thanks

[Tilly2]

Where are the nursery getting their extra costs of £380.00?

[LottieLoo1]

Hi Tilly

I would love to know myself, I've just asked for a breakdown as I feel it is a substantial 'extra' cost. We currently pay £765 pcm for 3 days.

Thanks

[Tilly2]

Gosh! That's a lot of money to find.
Have you seen this website? There might be some help for you on here.

https://www.justchildcare.co.uk/30-hours-free-childcare-faqs/#1533204627373-bb94a30d-edc3

[bednobs]

the 30 free hours is only available during term times. However, as most children go to nurser throughout the year, the nursery annualises the 30 free hours, so it's actually a shade over20 free hrs a week. Im sorry i dont know about uc

[bednobs]

this is from the gingerbread website "Once your child is 3 you can use a combination of universal credit and free childcare schemes to pay for childcare.

If your childcare provider participates in the 30 hours term-time free childcare scheme, you will be able to use that scheme to receive 30 hours of free childcare during term-time. If you need more than 30 hours childcare, you can pay for the other childcare hours by claiming universal credit childcare element payments to cover 85% of the costs, up to a maximum monthly amount of £646.35 for one child and £1108.04 if you have two or more children.

You would then pay for the rest from your own income, e.g. your wages."
does your nursery have a finance person? They'll probably know more