Funding covers a set number of hours per week for early education and childcare, which include the fundamental areas of learning like communication, physical development and social-emotional skills

In April 2025, the Government updated their Guidance for funded childcare places. This Guidance clearly stated that:-

Government funding is not intended to cover the costs of meals, other consumables, additional hours or optional enhanced services and activities.

Essentially, this means that all costs related to the above are not included in the amount the Government pays us for delivering your child’s high-quality funded place. Whilst The Wendy House, along with most early years providers, has historically made a daily charge to funded parents, in the form of ‘Consumables’, we have never made this a mandatory requirement for being able to take up a funded place at our setting.

However, the revised Guidance emphasises that, from 1^st April 2025, charges for these extras must be requested on a voluntary basis, alongside your child’s funded place. Essentially, the Government is offering funded childcare sessions but not paying for all that this entails. 

Our daily consumables charge with effect from 1^st January 2026 is £7.50. All of this is attributed to our food costs.  At The Wendy House, we use a specialist nursery catering service called Zebedees to prepare and deliver daily, fresh, nutritious meals and snacks for your child. Their menus are readily available to view on our Food and Nutrition page and at the front door of the nursery. In addition to this, we buy, prepare and provide a healthy and nutritious breakfast and afternoon tea; again, these menus are readily available to view.

It has always been our nursery policy to provide food for all the children in our care. We prefer not to accept individual packed lunches or snacks from home because: –

• Providing nutritionally balanced meals and snacks for all the children at our setting forms part of our grading by Ofsted
• Environmental Health set down very stringent guidelines for the storage of packed lunches, which would not be feasible in early years settings, given the available hours of childcare provided each day.
• Some children are in nursery for long days, from breakfast to teatime so time for parents to prepare nutritious meals before children are ready for bed could be limited
• If a lot of parents wanted to provide packed lunches, we would struggle with storage space to keep food at the required temperature
• We would have less control over the food brought into nursery and the allergens they contain. We have a number of children with food allergies at the setting, and we must carefully monitor and cater for their dietary requirements.

In addition to the early education and childcare places that the Government pays for, The Wendy House has always aspired to offer much more.  This includes activities and learning enhancements that benefit both you and your child.  We are sure you will agree that they offer a great opportunity to boost learning opportunities and personal, physical and social development.

These include (but are not limited to): –

• ‘Family’ app
• Parent evenings
• Child Enrichment activities
• Christmas celebrations, parties and gifts
• Easter parties and gifts
• Pre-school graduation
• Mother’s DayDay/Father’s Day celebration activities
• Butterfly Farm
• Zoo Lab
• Small animal farm visits
• National Book Day (with books for each child)

Many of these activities and events are parent-oriented, and we enjoy the opportunity of inviting family members to share these with us.

Costs associated with the above have always been absorbed and will continue to be absorbed by the nursery. This ensures that all children benefit from the resources, celebrations and enhanced activities that we provide, without exception.    

The Government is requiring us to be open and transparent about consumable charges and we must now ask parents to voluntarily agree in contributing toward them.

Below is a breakdown of our how our current daily consumables charge is calculated:-

On registration with us, we will provide a Parent Declaration Form which sets out the above breakdown. We will also request parental agreement to meet these voluntary daily consumables.

Your agreement to pay for consumables will be on an ongoing basis, however, planned holidays and periods of absence will not be charged providing at least one week’s notice is given.

Any parents who wish to ‘opt out’ of the voluntary consumables charge are welcome to contact our Nursery Manager to discuss our Opting Out Policy