A mother-of-two says she has still not received a refund after spending £4,000 on a nursery place for her son who should have been free.
Helen, from Nottinghamshire, was entitled to 30 hours of free childcare per week but was billed by the nursery.
The ombudsman said the district council was to blame for failing to monitor the daycare’s fee policy and ordered compensation to be paid.
The Council said it accepted the Ombudsman’s recommendations.
Despite being asked to pay back half of the additional fees, Helen said she still hasn’t received the money.
Helen, a self-employed teacher, said: “I chose kindergarten because they told me they accepted the free periods.
“The first time I heard it wasn’t free was when I got the first bill after my son turned two.
“Over the next two years I overpaid the nursery by £4,000.”
She repeatedly asked the nursery for a breakdown of the bills, but never received one.
“Forty emails later I still had no response,” she said. “They charged me random and arbitrary amounts that they could never justify.
“The owner eventually told me it was to cover the gardener and the cleaner.”
The nursery is now under new ownership.
Helen said she initially refused to move her son because she felt he was settling in, but withdrew him after two years.
During this time, she submitted her complaint to the Council.
“They literally just called the owner and then told me they checked and everything is fine,” she said.
After protesting again, the agency conducted a slightly more detailed investigation but still found nothing.
Helen then contacted the Ombudsman.
“They ruled in my favor but didn’t set an amount and the council is still trying to extricate itself,” she said.
“They offered me £1,000 which made me angry.
“After three years, no one has looked at the bills or my spreadsheet of my payments. Even though the ombudsman ruled in my favour, I still have to fight.
“It also annoys me that the funds for free children’s places are actually not enough to pay for the day-care centers.
“If it had enough funding, maybe they wouldn’t do something like this.”
- Like many parents, Helen expected daycare to be free under the government’s early childhood education eligibility program.
- Some two-year-olds and all three- and four-year-olds are eligible for fully-funded kindergarten places, but kindergartens have long argued that funding is too low.
- In the past, Local Government Ombudsman Michael King has said: “Free has to mean free. While I recognize that local authorities – and the early childhood education sector – are struggling financially, it has always been the government’s intention that these places be made available to parents free of charge.”
- The Ombudsman said he was concerned local authorities might not live up to the government’s promise to parents.
- Jonathan Broadbery, director of policy and communications at the National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA), a charity that supports the nursery sector, said: “The government is disingenuous when they promise parents ‘free’ hours but fail to pay providers a fair price In the vast majority of cases, daycares can only survive by charging parents for activities and supplies beyond the funded hours.”
- A government spokesman said: “We are investing millions in better training for staff working with pre-school children and have put in place plans to help providers in England run their businesses more flexibly.”
The Ombudsman found that Helen’s son should have received 30 hours a week free of charge under the national early childhood education eligibility scheme.
It said Helen had no choice but to pay for “supplies” and that the nursery’s billing had not been clear or transparent, nor had the council’s own investigation done enough to get to the bottom of the problem.
Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman Michael King said: “In this case the council did not do enough to work with the mother and the nursery to resolve the case and instead simply referred her complaint back to the nursery.
“It is the council’s duty to work with providers to ensure their invoices and receipts are clear, transparent and itemized.
“I am now asking the Council to consider my report at the highest level to ensure it learns from this complaint so that other parents are not similarly disadvantaged.”
The Ombudsman said the council should pay Helen a combined £200 for the time, trouble and perceived hardship.
She said she should also reimburse half of the additional fees she paid between January 2020 and the date her child left kindergarten in February 2022.
It also ordered the council to review the kindergarten’s policies and practices.
Irene Kakoullis, Nottinghamshire County Council’s early childhood services group leader, said: “County Council has accepted the Ombudsman’s recommendations and will take the necessary action.”
She said the council could not pay for any extra hours of nursery school over and above the free entitlement – but Helen said she hadn’t asked them to fund extra hours.
“If the complainant has further concerns, they should contact the Ombudsman directly,” Ms Kakoullis said.
Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, Twitteror Instagram. Submit your story ideas to eastmidsnews@bbc.co.uk.
Add Comment