Seems like we’ve found a great childminder for SM junior, but she expects to be paid full wack even when she takes holidays (4 weeks/pa). This basically amounts to £1200 out of our pocket plus the cost of using a stand-in minder.

She’s on a 12 month contract, which IMO means the employer doesn’t ‘have to’ pay holiday entitlement.

Sure, it’s different if we’re on holiday and still have to pay – no problem with that, because we’re taking up a space she could otherwise sell. But I just don’t see why we should for out for her and her family’s hols.

What’s the STW consensus?

I assume she is just bargaining with you.

Tell her you won’t pay it and she might not accept your job offer.

So I guess it is up to you – is she worth another £1,200?

If she is self-employed then she has no legal right to statutory holiday entitlement. It’s £100 per month – is she worth it?

But if someone exclusively employs someone for a certain time, the ’employee’ gets more rights (and the ’employer’ also has to pay NI contributions).

If she’s a ‘standard childminder’ – ie takes kids into her home as a business and won’t be one to one with your child (she’s not a nanny) then if she chooses to shut up shop for a month a year then it’s her loss.

Only ‘get-out’ could be if she says she divides 11 months worth of payments across a 12 month period.

My son’s nursery always closed between christmas and new year but they didn’t charge for those days (or bank holidays).

Hmm, this is what we’re trying to figure out. She really is the best we’ve come across and you can see she’s devoted to nurturing and developing infants and children (as opposed to just looking after them).

But £1200 is financially and psychologically a big hit, especially when she’s in S Africa for 2 weeks this autumn and we’re stumping up £600 of it. Going to find a way to approach this – especially as she surely can’t have a legal right to such.

She charges for bank holidays too – so my argument is we can ‘use’ her for those if we choose, i.e. we want a day off to ourselves once in a while.

Tell her to jog on.

so is she a nanny working in your home as an employee or a childminder (LEA and ofsted registered) doing care in her home?

Then she may tell you someone else IS prepared to pay it for her.

so is she a nanny working in your home as an employee or a childminder (LEA and ofsted registered) doing care in her home?

Childminder (LEA/Ofsted reg etc) in her home. Normally has 3 infants/children on the go.

then she should be sorting her own holiday pay out of money she takes when she’s working – not expecting you to cover it.

However, if she’s who you want and other parents are prepared to use her under these circumstances then you’ve got a difficult choice if she’s not prepared to budge.

There are plenty of parents around here who would haven’t an issue paying for the full 52 weeks.

Mate I feel for you! We’ve been through this process ourselves about a year ago and it’s a nightmare. Here’s what we learned:

Childminders are self employed businesses, they are not employees and therefore have no ‘entitlement’ under law for things like paid holidays. If they are a ‘nanny’ and are employed as such, then you do have to pay them for their holiday entitlement (27 days including Bank Holidays I think) but you also have to pay PAYE/NI contributions etc. If you’re not paying NI then you’re not employing a nanny.

Every childminder we interviewed wanted to be paid for their holidays and wanted us to pay when we took our son away on holiday also. In the end we negotiated that we would pay for one but not the other and our child minder agreed. We do not pay her when she takes holidays but we do when we take him out.

£1200 seems like a lot unless you’re in central London. We’re down in west sussex and full time care, 8am to 5pm, including lunch, nappies and all trips out (he went horse riding last week for example) and it costs us about £1000 a month.

When you find a child minder you trust, then you won’t feel half as bad at the cost; you’ll also want to hang on to them at all costs. If you’re baulking at their rate or their demands for concessions, then it’s more than likely because you don’t see the value and/or don’t trust them.

For us part of that trust came from the fact that the childminder was willing to partner with us and be equitable. She recognised that we were making a big commutment to the hours we were offering her and that on a lot of occassions we are able to have our son here rather than take him to her, so all in all, she gets a good deal from our placement. In return for that, she was willing to give up on her paid holiday and consequently we feel we have someone we really trust.

Best of luck. It’s a really hard pill to swallow initially but a good one will make your life so much easier.

I’m with you on that one geetee. Finding the ‘right’ CM can be a lengthy struggle, particularly when some seem the sort to do little more than babysit.

£1200 seems like a lot unless you’re in central London. We’re down in west sussex and full time care, 8am to 5pm, including lunch, nappies and all trips out (he went horse riding last week for example) and it costs us about £1000 a month.

Surrey – not much change from that in the immediate vicinity unless you want a (sometimes significant) drop in quality.

She really seems to be the identikit minder for us and ticks all the boxes. Alright, we don’t ‘know’ her properly yet, but all the signs are that she’ll be fantastic. Only time will tell though if we trust her implicitly – but she feels right, that’s for sure. Hence we’re happy to pay more.

Will put my diplomatic hat on and see how we go.

Cheers guys

Also check the small print regarding being 5 minutes late, some of the childminders we saw wanted £50 per 15 minutes for being late 😯

Ours seemd ok at first, 1/2 pay for 2 weeks holiday on each side. But she crossed out the settling in session section of the contract, my wife done one day work then left and we got stitched for 4 weeks notice 🙁

The bad news is, if she is deemed to be an employee (which is determined by the applcation of the IR35 test … google it and answer the questions and will give you a yes / no answer) then you do have to pay her the statutory holiday entitlements (currently 27 days annually due, pro rata for part time employees).

The entitlement does include any Public holidays etc, and you can nominate what days employees must take as paid annual leave (so yes … you can make her work public holidays for no extra wage etc).

You cannot negotiate out of it, or pay them the cash equivalent and if you do attempt to do so you are opening yourself up to all sorts of bother if they get offside with you at any stage.

Even employees on short term contracts / acting under agent have the same entitlements if deemed to be an employee.

If she is deemed not to be an employee by IR35 then its purely a contract negotiation between you and her company (be it LTD or self employeed)

Bearing in mind that any calculation of salary should also include the holiday entitlement (ie annual cost / salary).

The one solace is that being employed for under a year there is very little recourse available to her through the Employment Tribunals.

and you can nominate what days employees must take as paid annual leave

This is a good point – pay her 4 weeks holiday but then tell her when those 4 weeks have to be taken (ie, the same time as when you are on your holidays). Otherwise she gets two lots of holidays.

but she’s not an employee, she’s a small business offering a service to several ‘customers’ from her own home.

If she were a nanny at the OP’s home caring only for his child it woudl be different.

Hence the recommendation of applying the IR35 test to the situation, and letting HMRC decide once and for all ….

My wife and I have childminded for about 10 years. Because childminders are self employed then in theory we can charge what we like. However I would say it is good practice not to charge when we are on holiday. We take 4 weeks off a year and don’t charge, but we do average out 11 months pay over 12 so that parents have a fixed monthly fee and we still have money coming in whilst away. In some cases this works out slightly cheaper for parents. Try and find out what other childminders in the area are charging and see if you can negotiate a more agreeable payment structure. If you need any help or advice, drop me an E-mail and I will be happy to help.

She should charge enough in the weeks whe is working to take the weeks she’s not off without charging.

But, it costs you the same regardless, so does it really matter?

Andy, would you mind if I emailed you some questions? My wife has been a nanny abroad and I wanted to find out if childminding was a career option here.

Cheers,
Rich

And of course it is a double-whammy as the OP pays for her holiday AND has to pay someone else to look after the kid(s) whist she is getting rogered senseless in Magaluf.

The question is, would you be happier if she didn’t charge you when she took holiday, but charged 9% more when she is working instead?

I think this thread has just won the highly coveted ‘most middle class subject matter ever posted on the forum’ award 😉

*sips latte and goes back to reading the Guardian media section*

I think this thread has just won the highly coveted ‘most middle class subject matter ever posted on the forum’ award

That would be because the subject matter suggests that both parents are actually working.

That would be because the subject matter suggests that both parents are actually working

That would, by definition, make them working class surely?

Seems I have somehow been misrouted to mumsnet

Its ok. Don’t worry. I’ve just been over there and they’re discussing 29er tyres.

I’m sure the blip in the space/time continuum will be resolved shortly 😀

That would, by definition, make them working class surely?

Nah that would be too logical. Our nomenclature is designed to cause maximum confusion.

The upper classes are as poor as church mice
Thge middle class work harder than the working classes and typically have more disposable income than the upper classes
And the working classes don’t tend to work, they just live of state benefits and spend it all on fags, booze and Sky Plus subscriptions.

That would be because the subject matter suggests that both parents are actually working.

Here’s an idea, one of you could stop working and actually look after your kids, like proper parents? Or would that be too much of a restriction on your ability to buy the latest bling-machine to show off in the car parks of the gnarly SE? 😉

Pulls up a chair….
8)

Oooooooooo controversial.

I’m just doing a fresh cafetiere? Hob Nob anyone?

Wow, the costs associated with having kids always amaze me – I don’t know how folks do it. Just read through this thread, and realised that it’s going to cost you around £15,000 a year in child minding fees.

At least you know what you’re getting into from the off. Its to prepare you for later life when they develop a yearning for a crack habit/university education*

*delete whichever is presently the cheapest to maintain

In fairness it would take a salary of around £21500 just to pay for those fees so giving up work mightn’t be the worst idea.

Are they chocolate hobnobs?

Edit: actually it won’t be quite as much as that as I forgot to allow for a tax free allowance.

*is not convinced the 😉 will take the sting out of it*

Giving up work might cost you dear later in life though as a 5-7 year break doesn’t do you any favours career wise.

Plus, if you already earn say 35-40k then you are still way ahead.

And you may not actually like your kids enough to want to spend any time with them. They might be ginger or summink