Please see below our new funding and session model. In operation from April 2025 & September 2025

Dear families,

Last week of term you received an email regarding the upcoming National Insurance Contributions we are facing as a charity-run pre-school. On Friday, 21^st February we were delivered yet another blow from our government on funding. Although these funding changes for families are fabulous, this is disastrous news for Honeybees and other early years providers.

You can read these updates here:

England funding rates 2025-26: won’t factor in National Insurance Contributions  - NDNA

Earlyeducation and childcare (effective from 1 April 2025) - GOV.UK

From 1^st April 2025

In order to tackle the increase in National Insurance Contributions, we have been forced to increase our fees from April 2025. This is a decision we have not taken lightly and unfortunately is on a ‘need’ basis rather than a want. Our new fees will be:

·        Termly fee £60.

·        Late Bee £10 per session.

·        Three- and four-year-olds £7.40 per hour.

·        Two-year-olds £8.00 per hour.

·        Under Two-years-olds £12.50 per hour.

New Model from September 2025

So that we comply with the new Government requirements, and continue to remain transparent with our families, our changes will be:

·        Our termly contribution for funded families of £60. This will now be called a voluntary contribution.

As the word voluntary suggests, parents are not obliged to pay but we strongly request that you do so to allow us to deliver an outstanding quality provision for our

children. This voluntary contribution covers our enhanced provision and extra experiences, such as:

Highly qualified staff with extra ratio and staff training.

Day trips such as outings in the community/ train/bus journeys.

Dance, yoga, forest school equipment, tuff tray resources, online learning journal, small intervention groups such as, communication/speech & language therapy.

We are now obliged to offer funded only places for a set number of families (which we have always done and will continue to do so). For example, we currently have some parents who are not required to pay for the lunch hour due to family circumstances and who receive the Early Years Pupil Premium allowance. In addition, we will continue to waiver the registration fee and the termly fees for these families.  

For the sake of transparency, we are letting you know that our fully funded spaces will be a maximum of five. We will continue to operate a waiting list for these spaces and if you think you would like one of these spaces, please speak to Sam or Tina and we will add you to the waiting list.

The £25 registration fee, which is extremely low compared to other providers, and which in the past has guaranteed a place, this is now optional and if you do not feel that this is fair, you can request a space without a fee being charged but we may need to add you to a waiting list for a space.

Changes to our hours offered from September 2025:

·        When all working families of children from nine months old and upwards will be entitled to 30 hours, we will no longer be offering sessional hours. We will only be offering a daily session of8.30am-3.30pm.

·        If you are entitled to 15 hours only, we will be operating daily session 8.30-3.30 and no sessional hours.

·        Parents can continue to pay for any extra hours on top of their funded hours.

We operate as a community-run, not for profit charity and have served our families for many years. Without monies coming in which help to keep us afloat, we will have no choice but to close.  Our new fee model reflecting the most recent Government funding and our additional charges are there to make us sustainable by bridging the gap in the funding rate we receive from the government and what is actually needed to run our setting on an hourly basis.

As ever, if you feel you cannot make payment please speak to us in confidence 

*We are expecting a huge rise in families requesting their 30 hours of funding from September 2025. Therefore, please confirm, as soon as you can, which full days you would like your child to attend from September in order to secure your preference*

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