Funding hours notice period

Are there any las across the country that allow their minders to charge a notice period for children attending sessions for funded hours only?? I think it's fundamentally very wrong to say we can't charge a reasonable notice period but trying to discover if it's just Cornwall or other las have the same policy? My funding agreement with Cornwall council says I have to give the council and parents 30 days notice if I want to stop receiving funding, but apparently I am not allowed to charge a notice period, which has resulted in one parent taking up 2 spaces switching to a school nursery with literally no notice st all, they were due last Tuesday morning but didn't turn up, mum said had a bad night... then that afternoon, I'm switching them to nursery... no thanks or anything, I am seriously thinking of not taking on 30 hour children if I can't guarantee their income on a day by day basis.

I'm very sorry to hear this, how upsetting for you.

I'm North Yorkshire and we are not allowed to charge notice for funded hours.

the majority of my funded children were either with me before they took funding, and/or also use extra hours, so pay notice on those extra hours. one funded child left with no notice, but mum offered to pay my notice period. ( I accepted, and then she said 'if you fill the space, can I have the payment returned' !!!! I said, sorry, NO! )

I think we should be able to.

I have just read through our new sample provider agreement for funding, and it does say we can charge a 'deposit' for a space and hold for a 'reasonable period'. When I have time, I am going to clarify this, and maybe, hold the 'deposit' until child leaves, and then, if leave without notice, it would be something towards lost funding. The majority of my 'regular' children have paid a deposit that is refunded in final months fees ( as long as they don't leave before 6 months of care has been provided )

The only problem I foresee with this, is that you shouldn't offer a funded place with any restrictions/conditions, so I don't quite see how you can charge a deposit, as that makes it a condition taking a place.

I'm not offering the 30 hours, only 15hrs / 2 yr old, and then pretty much only for existing families.

I haven't had any funded children for a while so haven't looked at the LA agreement for a while. I've got a feeling though that we can't ask for any notice period. That's another reason why I only offer funding for children who are already in my care. By then I know the families and know what their plans are with regard to sending their child to nursery at some point. There's much less chance of them leaving suddenly.

We can only charge if the child does extra hours with us - then we can use our normal terms and conditions for those.

In Cheshire east we will be able to charge a deposit - to refund or keep if they don't take their place - that might help to create a bit of a buffer ...

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.