Renfrewshire Council

How many free nursery hours or childcare you can get

How many free hours you can get for early learning, nursery or childcare, how you can use your hours, pay for additional (wraparound) hours childcare.

All children entitled to free early learning and childcare will get up to 1140 hours of nursery or childcare, depending on when they start during the year.

Most of our nursery centres are open before and after the school day across the full year. You should check with your preferred nursery or childminder if they can accommodate the hours, days or arrangements that you would like.


How you can use your hours

You have different options for how you use your nursery or childcare hours. 

You can arrange your child's nursery time or childcare for term time only or use the hours over the whole year. 

For example, you could have:

  • 6 hours from Monday to Friday during the school term (38 weeks)
  • a morning or afternoon only session across the whole year (48 weeks)
  • 2.5 days a week over the whole year (48 weeks)
  • up to 10 hours extended day care for just some of the year 

You could also combine your nursery and childcare arrangements, where your child goes to a nursery for part of the week and a childminder for the rest of the week. 

The maximum number of free early and learning and childcare hours that a child is entitled to per week is 30 hours.

See what council run and council approved nurseries and childcare centres there are in Renfrewshire:

Apply for a free nursery or childcare place

If you want to send your child to a private nursery or childminder that's not run or approved by us, you won't be able to use your free hours of nursery or childcare and you will have to pay for the cost.


Additional (wraparound) childcare

You can also pay for additional (wraparound) childcare if you want more nursery or childcare hours outside of the free hours your child gets.