6 closest nurseries to me are currently charging £2.5k-3k per month for 5 days a week. Seems nuts to me but they are all full with no spaces.

Chatting to other people at play groups and the like it seems most are struggling and one way of reducing costs could be to employ a nanny and split between 2/3 families, but, no one I’ve spoken to has actually done this in the real world. Seems for most, one parent has quit work or they leave kids with parents. I’ve said I’ll look into it on behalf of interested parties.

Has anyone here tried setting up a nanny share made it work successfully? Looking online it looks like each family must pay minimum wage to the nanny. 1st nanny I called confirmed this. Are nanny’s really raking in £65k a year if looking after 3 kids?

Our previous childminder was awesome but has just haded in notice to move to a sunnier climate.

Where in UK are you? There are legal implications of setting up a childcare arrangement with children from multiple families, rather than a true nanny or au pair set up within one family. Wales, Scotland and England are all different, I am unsure about NI.

One of my staff has had au pairs for many years and it worked well – she was single mum and it was just a great set up. Her children have been cared for by all sorts of nationalities and exposed to some wonderful cultures. All done through a proper agency.

South West London.

Legally you have to register as an employer and manage employers NI + pension which alone doesn’t put me off.

I was thinking it would be more fun with another kid or two rather than being looked after alone. Agree getting exposure to other nationalities and cultures is good.

Don’t forget you have other statutory duties as an employer, such as paying holidays, redundancy when terminating the contract, sick leave and maternity/paternity leave etc.

Don’t have kids (thought the thread was about something altogether different…), so as an outsider looking in, why do people pay all this money for a nanny? Fair enough if you’re infinitely wealthy and just want your kids out of the way so you can chill out. But if you’re a couple both working, and can afford to pay ££££ why not one stop working and spend some time with the binlids? Must be good for them too?

What are folks doing for work if they have a spare 3k a month floating about for somebody else to look after their kids.!!!

Has anyone set up a nanny share before?

Pornhub!? 😬

IGMC… 🧥

We’ve got a nanny, and before anyone jumps on the typical STW roast, my partner wanted to keep her career going, and with 4 kids (twins) it was the most cost effective solution while they are little. We use NannyPaye to sort all the pension and payroll stuff, she gets paid embarrassingly little and we just about break even with my partners take home.

The payroll company are great, I’d suggest giving them a call or email and asking them how it would work.

To he honest I’m living above my means and would personally prefer to move to Inners, become a house husband and ride round all day with the kid in a shotgun seat.

I’m trying to reduce costs by doing a nannyshare. Tied to London for work right now. <span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>Chatting to people around that do have 3k a month to spare it seems a mix of inheritance, divorce settlement, arms dealing, ebike sales, oil, ppe/covid testing or siphoning off ULEZ payments that fund childcare 😂 The few honest ones are breaking even tied to a work benefit / golden handcuff or can’t pay their mortgage on a single salary.</span>

Cheers for the Nannypaye tip, looks awesome.

You may also need to register with Ofsted and meet a number of safeguarding and qualification requirements.

https://www.gov.uk/become-childminder-nanny

Currently experiencing this nightmare first hand

No local nurseries provide care outside of 9-3, the one that did has scaled back recently due to costs / staffing. Have a look on your local jobs page – around our way every nursery is recruiting for staff or managers.

School has no out of hours club. In Scotland there is no requirement for them to support this, England I believe is different

There were 3 local child minders. One has just chucked it and the other two have scaled back and are full. Also none do pre school kids. From speaking to a friend who’s wife is a childminder issue is that it no longer makes any financial sense. The state funded 30 hours for pre school means there is a huge demand for wrap around but very little else. Combined with increased costs, admin and the preponderance of easier ways to earn more money for less risk / effort the arse has fallen out of it.

Brexit has made it more or less impossible to get an Au Pair outside of London. We looked into this extensively but the visa requirements are onerous and London is a huge draw for anyone that really wants to come to the UK. There are possibilities but it’s a minefield.

If you come up with a solution I’d like to hear it. I think it’ll be very hard while the current labour market and immigration conditions exist. It’s a national scandal tbh and a huge barrier to any sort of equality.

Don’t have kids (thought the thread was about something altogether different…), so as an outsider looking in, why do people pay all this money for a nanny? Fair enough if you’re infinitely wealthy and just want your kids out of the way so you can chill out. But if you’re a couple both working, and can afford to pay ££££ why not one stop working and spend some time with the binlids? Must be good for them too?

The situation isn’t ideal, but both remaining working, and paying for childcare makes sense in a lot of situations, even if on the face of it it appears to be a break even

– Continuity of career/ not needing to find another equal job afterwards

– professional development/qualification continuity

– Giving the parent a break from 24/7 childcare, grown up conversations etc

– Continuity of pension contribution

– Private healthcare that covers children

– Qualification for maternity leave for any further children

– It is only a few years that you will need a nursery. The cost of fees for those few years may be less than lost future earnings by having th<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>e career gap</span>

I asked my wife about a nanny share, but she was having none of it!

I(also)GMC…..

My wife was a childminder for years while the kids were young as she wanted a way to be with them whilst still earning and we avoided silly nursery fees. Money is crap unless you have loads of kids and hours are long. She’s a nanny now for twins round the corner which is better but money is crap and they have just qualified for 30 hours nursery so her salary has just halved, yay! As stated above you either pay for the nursery owners Porsche or pray that the nanny/childminder you pay minimum wage doesn’t jack it in to go and work in Aldi for far more money.

Has anyone here tried setting up a nanny share made it work successfully? Looking online it looks like each family must pay minimum wage to the nanny. 1st nanny I called confirmed this. Are nanny’s really raking in £65k a year if looking after 3 kids?

Where did £65k come from – why would each family be paying the Minimum Wage?

We had a Nanny years ago, in fact it was in the 90’s, for our first two.  Basically it was the cheapest way AND she came to the house so there was no need to get them and take them somewhere, plus the same in the afternoon/evening.  When I hear about the high cost of nursery now I still wonder why people don’t just employ a Nanny.

And if they’re going to be working across multiple families then they’ll be better setting up as self-employed, and just billing each of you the relevant (pro-rata) costs.  It’ll never be free nor cheap and I’d imagine that unlike in our time it’ll be complicated by the free-hours (and how they’ll get that back off the Govt no idea), but it should still be cheaper than a nursery because they’ll be in one of your houses (have you thought of this bit?).

But, if this still means that you’re paying out almost as much, if not more, than the lowest earner of the pair of you are earning (net pay) then I think you’re mad personally.

Watching with interest not for kids though. In our road about 6 households are going to get to the needing carers stage in the next 5 to 10 years. Over wine there have been semi serious discussions about employing stereotypical blonds from Nordic countries and assorted attractive variations to care for us jointly in the coming years…..

! As stated above you either pay for the nursery owners Porsche

Errr…….no.

Let us look at the cost for OP of £2.5k a month shall we? (Which is higher than elsewhere in UK).

Staff salary: you want some half decent early years staff, many with a degree these days, who are both trustworthy and help your child’s development. Salary: maybe £25-30k depending on seniority, so with on-costs that is £30-35k a year or more. Senior managers, usually one or two per nursery, are of course on more. Many ECE’s are on not much  more than national mimimum wage, which is £22k ish a year these days. Plus you need to train them and pay for inspections.

Building – in south London, I would struggle to estimate a costs. Rates, insurance, energy (and lets face it, nurserys tend to be warm and have the door to outside opening all the time…). Repairs, flooring. A small nursery could be in South London maybe well north of £500k to buy a building, or £000’s a month in rent. And the building needs fitting out properly with child size, durable doors, loos, flooring etc. Security for the door and outdoor space. Etc.

Resources: play and learning materials, furniture, outdoor area and play, food and snack. These add up to a good few £ a day per child.

Then you have all the IT for the online journals and emailing parents – so some computers, iPads all around, broadband etc. Phones.

Admin of course.

And of course we have small ratio’s – those ECE’s depending on age of child can have 3-8 children maximum.

So while I agree £2.5k is high for early years childcare, it is not out of the realms of understandable, particularly if child is in 8am-6pm with food included.

Errr…….no.

Yeah what matt_outandabout said. Not to mention that government funding for the 30 hours free once the child is eligible for it doesn’t actually cover the per-hour cost of looking after the child these days so everyone paying full whack is also subsidising them.

Anecdotally we have friends in south east London (Dulwich I think) who have have got a few nurseries around them, all massively oversubscribed and all charging many thousands a month for full time places. Their boy is a few months old, but apparently they should have signed him up a few months before he was born. Another friend (of a friend really) down near Epsom had the nursery his daughter goes to close on maybe a weeks notice because they ran out of money.

The short version is indeed that the failure of our government to adequately provide or fund early years childcare is a disgrace and one that is damaging both equality (which I imagine they’re less fussed about) and the labour market (which they do seem to care about).

Oh and if anyone here is paying for nursery and not using Tax Free Childcare, then check it out.

The short version is indeed that the failure of our government to adequately provide or fund early years childcare is a disgrace and one that is damaging both equality (which I imagine they’re less fussed about) and the labour market (which they do seem to care about).

And in Scotland, where our 1140 hours and Early Years strategy has been a leading policy of the government, we are facing a cut next year from £1.1bn a year spent on Early Years to £860m. All at a time when every cost is rocketing.

We topped out at about 1800 sek a month, for two kids.

Everything included, food, activities, trips, materials…

9 hours a day.

That’s what you get when the government gives a small toss.

why not one stop working and spend some time with the binlids?

around our way every nursery is recruiting for staff or managers.

Looks like theres a way to get paid to spend time with your own kids – only downside is spending time with everyone else’s kids too.

We topped out at about 1800 sek a month, for two kids.

Everything included, food, activities, trips, materials…

9 hours a day.

Yeah I don’t need to hear about your European socialist utopia of light and joy thankyouverymuch.

(Just kidding I am of course both incredibly jealous and sad that it’s so unlikely we’ll ever have something so enlightened here).

Where did £65k come from – why would each family be paying the Minimum Wage?

It was my understanding from the OP that each family was employing the nanny themselves, but providing some sort of central home based place where the nanny could work from looking after all 3 families’ kids.

FWIW, we had a nanny for our younger one so my wife could go back to work. That also meant she was wrap-around care for our older two; would do all the school runs etc. She was fantastic – cost us about 15k p.a. for about 2-3 days per week. I worked away a lot so it was perfect for us. This is NW and about 3-4 years back.

She went from us to a family and she’s done full time ++ for them for 4 years earning something like 35-38k I think.

When she was with us, she also worked for other families doing babysitting and nursery work. Each family employed her on their own. She also did a small bit through an agency.

We did wonder about asking her (paying her) to look after some friends’ kids in our house – that got very complex very quickly! We didn’t do it in the end.

Also, a former workmate was intending to bring over a nanny from his place of birth (African country) and convert his garage to a room for her to live in. He would pay her, but mostly she would be doing it for a green card. I suspect there’s a lot of that going on!

Shame about the au pair situation as well – I was wondering about having one now the kids are a bit older and might understand a bit more forrin culture.

Staff salary: you want some half decent early years staff, many with a degree these days, who are both trustworthy and help your child’s development. Salary: maybe £25-30k depending on seniority, so with on-costs that is £30-35k a year or more.

Yeah, no. We interviewed a prospective nanny who’d been an early years worker for a year or two. She was an apprentice and was on about £4.50 ph. She was a keyholder for the premises and a supervisor for the room.

There will be people who are qualified, but there’s a lot of scalping of younger workers who aren’t that good and “just want to work with kids”.

You might “want” people that are qualified, but there didn’t seem to be that many nurseries with them round our way.

What happens when one of the families moves away – who picks up the extra cost? No one stays in the same job/place for 5 mins nowadays so it’s bound to happen.

Has anyone here tried setting up a nanny share made it work successfully? Looking online it looks like each family must pay minimum wage to the nanny. 1st nanny I called confirmed this. Are nanny’s really raking in £65k a year if looking after 3 kids?

I want this clarified, as I’m changing career if this is the case!

Got to better than dealing with whiney teachers all day 🤣

The £65k comes from 3x families, each paying full-time min wage. In addition to HMRC, the nannies I’ve messaged so far appear to demand this. HMRC are like, yeah, you have to pay people a living wage. I’m like, they are going to get 65k. That’s quite a bit more than the minimum wage, right? They say yes, but that is the minimum wage in this situation; you can’t divide by three (Not that I was going to). It seems the unintentional and potentially incorrect application of the min wage rule at some point has somehow become standard. Even with wages like that there is not a lot of choice, many want to to do term time only, start late or finish early.

I’m seriously thinking of becoming a nanny x early rider cycling academy myself now.

This all paying Minimum Wage is bollox – utter bollox as in the case of three families the Nanny would be self-employed and bill the families individually or if they wanted to be PAYE one family would employ and the other two ‘contribute’ to them.

I reckon you (or someone else) isn’t asking the right questions or you’re speaking with HMRC’s cleaners.

So, HMRC tell me:

– If the nanny is self employed and doesn’t pay her taxes, then the families that use the nanny are liable for her tax payments. New to me too.

– If one family pay the nanny, then the cash paid to them by the other families is revenue and will be taxable.

– Even if we ignore HMRC, it seems to be what the nanny’s in the area are demanding too, unless we pay cash in hand. Personally that’s not for me and I want to keep everything above board.

.