Funded hours and nursery

My little boy will be starting nursery in September 2025, 3 days per week (30 hours). He will be 1 year 1.5 months. I’d assumed with the new funding from September 2025 I’d only be paying for the non-term time hours, and lunches on the days where the funding applies. However, my nursery are saying because I’m only putting him in 3 days per week I can’t access the 30 hours of free childcare, only 15 hours- I have to put him in 4-5 days to use the full 30 hours. Has anyone else childcare providers said this? I feel like I might try and change nurseries if it’s only my nursery which stipulates this, as it feels like we’re missing out on eligible hours!

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Personally no, but I know some places are funny about it, and others aren't (from what I've heard)

My nursery is the same, I have a 3 year old in nursery and only received 12 hours of funding over 2 days even though she’s there 18 hours total, and they recently changed it and put it down to 8 hours total! All nurseries around my area seem to be this way but all seem to calculate slightly differently.

We get the full 30 hours (22 over 52 weeks) for my 3 year old who does only 2 days a week. So I only pay lunches now she is 3! It is limited to 10 hours a day (ours is open 11) but sounds like that would suit you anyway! It’s a Coop nursery so might be one by you. Have heard others limit the funding to 6 hours a day xxx

Gosh I hope this isn’t the case! They never mentioned this to me when I signed her up for 3 days.

The problem with funding is it’s pretty much half the hourly rate to what the nursery charges, so sadly they would be at a loss if you used the full 30 hours. I work in a nursery and most do this unfortunately 😫 I will be putting my baby in a childminder from April and it kills me having to pay when there is funding. (She will be using the 15 hours but there is top up fee)

Ah okay! Thanks for your responses everyone, I’m going to look at a few nursery options in the local area and see what others say. The issue I’ve got is my monthly salary is quite low, esp going back part time, so if nursery fees are too high then I’d be looking at not returning to work at all as it wouldn’t be worth it! So I’m keen to access all the funding possible!

I think it’s depending on what the nursery set! Mine said as long as I do 3 full days they can access the funded hours 30 full hours. But they split this over the year as there open 52 weeks. Defo look around but look soon as lots of places have already gone

Ours did initially say this, but then everyone kicked up so much fuss they changed their minds and are now offering the full funding to those on three days as well. I did look around some other nurseries as well when I found out this about ours and most in the area did offer full funding; so ours was an outlier in their original decision. Bear in mind that it’s only during term time , ours now stretch it to be over the full year so we will only get 22 hours per week. I spoke to the council about this and they informed me that the nurseries can offer the funding in any way they like essentially, as long as they are upfront about prices etc

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