Anyone searching for Nursery Costs London is likely to have already prepared themselves for a shock.
The UK as a whole has incredibly high nursery costs – the second highest as a percentage of income in the world – but London is more expensive still.
In this page we will give some information about average nursery fees in London and briefly touch on how they compare to the rest of the country.
However, we will also do something perhaps a lot more useful. We will give you information on how you can receive high quality nursery care but save thousands of pounds by utilising the workplace nursery benefit.
Now that you’re primed to find out how you can bring those London nursery costs down, let’s get started.
We started by saying just how expensive there UK is as a whole for childcare, this is a topic we touched upon in a recent blog, research by the World Economic Forum showing that a couple with two young children would, on average, spend 35.7% of their combined income on childcare. This rate is second only to New Zealand and dwarfs the likes of Germany (5%) and the EU average of 12%.
Nursery Fees London
What does this mean in real terms?
Obviously, rates fluctuate, there is no set London rate for nursery fees, but Babycentre carried out work to try to find averages and came up with £210 our week for a child in full time nursery as a UK average. However, for London, the nursery costs average £280 per child, this 33% higher than the UK as a whole.
Slightly more anecdotal evidence backs these averages out, we spent many hours on forums trying to get a sense for what people are paying and found a range from just over £1,000 per month through to many paying £90 to £100 per day – this equating to more than £2,000 per month. Removing the extremes, £1,200 to £1,600 per month emerges as a good average for one child in full-time nursery care.
Saving you the need to do the maths, these multiply to £14,400 per year at £1,200 per month and £19,200 for £1,600 a month. The figures for anyone with two children are painful even to contemplate.
Average Cost of Childcare London
These high costs have tended to reduce the amount of hours parents are willing to work, a further piece of recent research showing that 40% of mothers who work part time would look to up their hours if only childcare was more affordable.
It might well be that you too feel in that situation, weighing up how many hours it is even worth doing if childcare is going to eat up a huge chunk of your salary.
However, we promised some better news and here it is. A workplace nursery scheme, which is incredibly easy for your employer to set up, will greatly reduce the amount of your salary that pays for childcare.
The scheme essentially links your place of work to a high quality local nursery, we will go into a little more detail about how the association works below.
Employees can send their children to the nursery as they already would, but the fees come out as a salary sacrifice and because they come out at source there are huge savings to be made on tax and NI.
On site, we have a Savings Calculator that will demonstrate just how much any parent could save.
Workplace Nursery Costs London
Using those London averages, someone paying £1,200 a month would save more than £3,500 a year and that’s if they are a basic rate tax payer. For higher rate tax payers, the saving jumps to £5,129.
For the £1,600 a month fees, the savings would come to around £4,700 (basic rate tax) and £6,800 (higher rate).
There is no limit to the amount saved, if there were two children in the nursery, the savings could easily go beyond £10,000 per year.
Looking at the monthly fees and using the £1,600 a month fees for someone paying the higher rate of income tax, the monthly saving is almost £600, the fees effectively coming down to £1,030.
The workplace nursery scheme is one that only has benefits, be that for employees, the employer and also the nursery they link with. The nursery gets paid out of salaries and so they do not have to chase payment, they also receive contributions from the employer, this extra money that can be spent on learning resources or other uses of benefit to the children.
The benefits to parents are obvious, they save money on quality nursery provision, they also get a say in how the additional funds are spent.
Employers meanwhile also save money as demonstrated in the calculator as well as potentially seeing valued members of their team being able to commit to more hours. Offering a workplace nursery scheme is also superb for staff recruitment and a scheme that can help attract quality new recruits.
Setting up a workplace nursery scheme is straightforward when done through workplace benefit specialists such as Enjoy Benefits. The requirement is for the link to be a proper one and not just a paper exercise, but this does not place a sizeable burden on the employer. Instead, there are simply a couple of short meetings a year, the scheme running smoothly in the background, administered by experts such as Enjoy Benefits.
Why Choose us as your Workplace Nursery Provider
Our web-based employee benefits service is easy to use and any queries are typically answered within the hour, meaning fast resolutions for busy workforces.
Each employer using the scheme has a named account manager on hand to ensure your scheme is the perfect fit for the needs of the company and its employees.
If you are an employer or an employee looking to find out more about workplace nursery schemes or would like to discuss setting one up, please contact us today on 0800 088 7315 to find out more.
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Queries are dealt with within 1 working day.
Contact Form
talk to our team
0800 088 7315
