A couple of nurseries/preschools in my area bag all nappies and send them home with parents! I can’t help wondering how many must drop them in street litter bins before they reach the car. Ultimately the council collects the nappies from somebody’s bin, so what’s the difference?

Personally I think every CM facing these charges should make it perfectly clear to clients on their bills.

My borough made a big announcement they would not be increasing our council tax. So we were all surprised when we got bills in March that were higher than last year. The council continued to insist they had not increased the council tax, and referred disgruntled enquirers to the breakdown which showed the increase was entirely due to the elements payable for the police, fire service, parish council, and other contributions.

I can’t help thinking we should use the same approach. 'Not' raise our fees, but charge parents an extra 50p per hour, with a note on the invoice to show this is due to borough bin collection costs; county council training costs; the cost of running Whitehall's 'free' childcare hours; admin hours for the government's GDPR fiasco, etc, etc, etc........