Free means free, but free doesn't mean viable. 

The sector has spent the last two years getting compliance right on invoices, charging structures and website transparency, and mostly succeeded. But compliance without a cost model is not financial safety. Most nurseries have never calculated their cost per funded hour disaggregated by age band and room, and that gap is the real commercial risk as the entitlement expansion bites.

This session will open with a human moment every operator will recognise, work through the funding gap in hard numbers, introduce a practical cost per hour framework, and close with what good looks like in practice. Dane will reference the new statutory guidance valid from 1 April 2026, including the monthly payment rights providers can demand from October.