Thanks everyone, I think we should be able to charge a notice period, it makes far more sense to say parents can't just swap and change between providers than to allow providers to charge a deposit to hold the space open. I think I'll keep any funded hours to a minimum now, it's really not worth the stress... especially after this parent that left decided to make a malicious complaint to ofsted about me, probably to make her feel better for behaving so badly... ofsted did a surprise inspection and she was satisfied she could see it was all malicious. Thank god the rest of my parents are wonderful or I'd be packing it in. Just going to focus on my holiday next week and my baby due at the end of the year rather than worry about people that have got nothing better to do than make stuff up, and some of the stuff she made up was ludicrous... I apparently told her 4 year old daughter she wasn't allowed to use my toilet, causing the child to set herself.... yeah because I loved scrubbing my carpet every day when the child was going through a stage of refusing to use the toilet. I've not had a single complaint in 10 years of minding so it's shocked me that someone can be so downright rude.