Following on from the discussion recently, I'm going to a committee meeting this Friday to suggest that we increase our rate for unfunded children so that it's in line with the grant. At the moment this is £3.48 in our area. I just think this will streamline our invoicing and make life much easier, especially once we go onto the 15 hours in September. I also think we should charge the going rate for the quality service we provide, plus we need to cover at least our staffing costs from fees and funding and at the moment the grant doesn't do that for us (we go quite a lot better than the required ratio, usually we're at about 1:4 or sometimes even more).

Is anyone willing to let me know what they charge per hour for their unfunded children, so I can go to committee with a feel for whether this is going to work?

Thanks!

We charge 3.50 per hour for unfunded children, we did do an audit of surrounding provision and we are in line with that

we charge £3.44 - the same as the the grant. It was less and funded children were a bonus but we found we were losing out as parents chose to use their funded hours elsewhere.

Many thanks, that's really helpful.

I probably should have added that at the moment we only charge £3 an hour for unfunded places.

same as funded... reason being the funding must not subsidise the remaining children and we needed to be able to show that it didn't. Only way we found to do this easily was to have all fees the same.. made life easier really.

If unsure we did a costing exercise as to how much we would have to charge if we had no funding at all to enable us to operate with no profit.. this made everyone very aware that the minimum amount we should charge needed to be increased...

like you we always worked over ratios minimum 1:5 often 1:4 and never less than 3 staff at any time...

Inge

Ours is £2.40 per hour (£6.00 per session) Thats very low but I doubt a lot of our parents could afford much more. We lost one earlier this year because of cost, I dont want the children to lose out and at the moment we are able to manage.

But now Inge has pointed out that funding shouldnt subsidise other children we might need to look at it, is that all LEAs or just yours Inge?

Didn't know that Inge.

Gosh yours is cheap Rea - you must do a lot of fund raising!!

We are a full daycare nursery and our hourly rate is more than the funding. But we only get £3.02 for funding. We're not allowed to charge 'top up' fees as the entitlement to grant funded ed has to be free. So we lose quite a bit on our grnad funded children.
Beehive

Couldn't you show that fundraising subsidises the non-funded children?

We charge the same for unfunded as we get for the funding, roughly. Sometimes the figures are rounded to make calculations easier. We used to have to explain the difference between what we received for funding and what we would have charged if the child wasn't funded, and the LA called this the residue. Recently they have stopped asking what we would have charged and what we spent the difference on. They only let us spend this residue on resources for the children but the cost of a level 3 member of staff could be included as we argued the greatest resource was a quality member of staff.

Think it is supposed to be same for all that one.... funding must go towards care of the actual child being funded... and not be used for another purpose...after all they are paying for that child so all money should be used to provide care for that child.. including all needed but with no profit.

While I know it can cause issues for some I do feel it is a fair condition to set.

It has been like that for years and became (for us) part of the funding agreement with LEA we have to sign each year.. same as not being able to charge funded children for anything, it has to be free. Voluntary payments could be asked for but it had to me made clear it was just that and child would not miss out if parents didn't pay.



think there would have to be substantial fund-raising to ensure all costs were covered by this... we couldn't have managed it..

I would check with your agreements if you have them or with LEA, could cause issues if you are ever audited.. as you are actually spending less per funded child than you are receiving, so they could actually come back and say well you don't need all the funded money per child as you are actually managing on less.. does that make any sense.. find it hard to explain..

Inge

Thanks Inge I see exactly what you mean and you have given me the back up I need to push this through.

I suppose it could be argued that we get them in on the cheap rate so that they stay with us once they're funded (which they do all seem to do), we need enough children to stay open so in some ways if the cheaper rate encourages new starters that is sort of helping the funded ones.

Anyway I am going to push for a raise. How interesting that there is such a variation between what different LEAs pay, we are very lucky here our LEA is good and our EY team are too.

Mind you I won't be saying that if we don't get the capital funding bid I put so much work into - we find out end of March!

Our rate is £3.00 per hour but 3 hour session for £7

We charge £3 per hour but receive £3.52 from NEG and £4.85 from 2 year old funding. I could not ask my families to match those hourly rates as they are not in a position to do that.

This is exactly the reason our LEA has said they are reducing funding for Playgroups, funding has been subsidising 2 year olds.

We currently charge £2.60 an hour but a hefty rise is on the cards for us - we are really worried about doing it though.

SuzieC8 - would you mind letting us know how your meeting went and how much of an increase you decided on, please.

Blimy we charge £3.76 per hour in line with funding and this will increase in Sept
We were told we shouldn't under sell ourselves
However its been a really hard finacial year so far, lots of bouncy cheques and late or non payments

We have over heads that need to be met have excellent ratios, qualified staff and outstanding Ofsted, any less and we may as well close.
We are a preschool that packs away daily in a village hall

Phew.........pack away setting- we charge £4 hour (funding is about £3.70
I was beginning to think we were the only ones that charged that much.

Thanks after this week your comment was made me feel really good

sad thing is I think (without being a big head) we are worth it, my staff work really hard not only with the education but the CARE, we do a lot more than some other groups and if Ofsted can see it (even though they are only one governing body) we must be on the right track.
We are in a rural area and do have fairly high rent etc.

which is what I tried to explain earlier.. if funding helps cover the rest of the children it is obvious you are being paid too much...

think this is a wake up call for settings to look at what they are doing and actually charge what they are worth... or pass on the actual cost to parents ..

we were in area of deprivation and parents managed to find the fees... we had arrangements and some who were offered free hours in individual cases.. but these were all at discretion...

If we keep subsidising the parents we will never get a decent income and this relates back to pay issues..

I know some will have to look at local settings and what they charge and this may have an impact.. but worth thinking about what low fees are doing overall

Inge

Hi Suzie

We are exactly the same as you. We currently charge £3.00 per hour and that will be going up to £3.50 per hour in September, NEG is £3.64. Would have liked the full £3.64 but step by step.........

We are looking at a potential shortfall next year so we need to do something. Quality costs. All we want to do is cover our operating costs. And still staff only receive 12 hours paid training per year, so in truth we would still not be covering costs. Fundraising is there to buy equipment to enhance our provision I think. Good luck, hope your meeting went well.

Our NEG is pretty poor at £3 per hour but we charge £3.90 for our under 3s which is easily justifed by the staffing ratio alone.

Hi, update on this, thanks to all your great responses I got instant agreement to go up in line with grant and everyone said 'why didn't we do that before'. (Err because when I suggested it previously you all thought it was a bad idea )

I also got a monthly budget for my leader - hurrah! She gets some autonomy rather than having to come cap in hand to us all the time. Last time round it was 'if we give her a budget she will just spend it' - err, yes isn't that the idea of a budget!!?

Committee tried the 'she can have a budget based on what we have left over', (i.e. nothing), but I suggested we work it the other way and give her a budget and then we know how much we have to fund raise.

Glad your meeting went well, thanks for letting us know how much you're putting up your fees, gives me the confidence to also suggest a 50p a hour increase.

WE currently charge £3.50 - about the same as our neg - but it is due to go up to £3.80 in September and a further rise of 20p is possibly on the cards for next April. A lot of our parents are on Tax Credits so they will have an increase in these to cover extra payments ( assuming they get it right that is ) and the others although they grumble when fees go up appreciate where the money goes. As a non-profit making nursery they see that the cash goes back into resources and staffing and are happy with that.

We shall be charging an hourly rate in line with the funding which for us goes up to £3.76 in April. We now review our budgets and set fees when funding rates are given out. SFF has meant a good increase for us.

A long long long time ago when we were audited as a test group for determining how much is really costs to run a group in our area there was some suggestion that we might only be paid what we charged rather than the true cost. This meant that in the long term we could have got less per hour than the actual amount of funding per hour - if you see what i mean - a dangerous game to play if you want to be sustainable.

Although £3.76 might seem a significant sum per hour when you are offering high quality care and education with above average ratios it really isn't that much.

Last year we got 5p for the whole 2.5 hours and my staff went without a pay rise - this year I'm pleased to say I can make up for that - they too have families to provide for and bills to pay and as most of the children attending my setting access only their funded hours they really won't notice the price increase.

Our treasurer has worked out the hourly rate at £5.50 an hour with 2 EYPS staff to pay and the rest all level 2 or 3.

Lunch session is £4.50 for 50 minutes.

We are a full day care Nursery and we charge £3.50 at the moment (has been the same since we opened) our funding is £3.58 but under SFF we will be getting £3.78 so we made the decision to increase hourly as well to stay roughly in line. We also have two year old funded at £4.30. We are slightly cheaper than other settings in the area but that is because we are SureStart and non profit making. With the increase in September our hourly will be £3.80


Opppps - just realised I posted a variation of this the other day - Dohhh holiday brain creeping in , just ignore me

we charge £4.00 per hour for the extra hours for funded children and the same for unfunded children.

I would like to charge exactly the same as the funded rate as it is so much easier for invoices etc but the hourly rate under SFF will not remain the same all year. this is because the deprivation and quality supplements are not added per child who actually takes up a space this coming year, but based on a 'snapshot' of actual numbers in january 2010. a lump sum per annum is then calculated from that but if our numbers go up (which I think they will as we have increased our registered numbers) those lump sums will equate to less per hour per child. Each term as the headcounts are done I think our hourly rate is bound to change.

to be honest I have sat in on all the early years funding meetings but managed not to anticipate this

budgeting is going to be very difficult this year...

I'm sending a letter out this half term increasing th fees to £3.50 per hour. And its only because of the fees I've read onhere that made me realise we were so cheap.

We were advised sometime ago to ensure our fees for unfunded children stayed in line with the neg. reason being all our unfunded children were under 3's and ratios are very different resulting in extra costs.

You were lucky to get some good advice there - no one from our area advises on costs to do with anything, fees, rent, staff wages absolutely nothing.

we currently charge £3 per hour, but are going up to £3.50 in the autumn because
we are worth it;
we charge less than most groups in our area;
to keep in line with NEF;
to give us a bit of a pay rise

We have been charging 6.50 for21/2 hrs but I have tried for years for the pre-school to charge the same as the funding. We are putting it up to 8.40 for 3 hrs ( Why I dont know) and we are running at a loss. I have always felt that 3 year olds upwards should pay the same, they get the same care, we observe and assess them and they are recieving their entitlement elseware. Why should we loose out, The sraff did not ger a rise this year.

We get £3.66 for funded children but we only charge £3.00 for extra hours.

Hi All
A really interesting post, we have just put ours up to £3.60 per hour

Debbie

I've been checking out the groups in our area and it varies hugely: from £3 per hour ( us!) to over £5 per hour ( private school nursery), but our EYDO is telling everyone to bring fees in line with funding, fine for us, we can start to move ours up a bit, which is what we're doing in September, but we'll still be slightly below funding.

Well our base rate under SFF is only £2.50ish per hour, and we charge parents £6 per session (2.5 hours) The 'top ups' on the SFF seem to vary term by term so we've not been able to work out any constant to base a session cost increase on. We were only £5 a session until Easter then 'hiked it up'.

This makes me so cross. How can settings possibly be more businesslike in working out costings etc to ensure they are sustainable in the long term if they can't even calculate how much their income will be once the SFF comes into force. Something has to give.

Maz

Absolutely - found the piece of paper, Base rate is £2.67, then there's deprivation setting allowance, deprivation child allowance, non contact allowance. training allowance, and transitional payment, which all vary, term by term