The cost of childcare in the UK is among the highest in the developed world, and for many families the arithmetic of full-time nursery or private nanny simply does not work once salaries, pension contributions, and employer taxes are added up. The nanny share sits in an interesting middle ground: more personalised than a nursery, more affordable than a private nanny, and with social benefits for the children involved.
It is also an arrangement that requires more setup effort and legal awareness than parents often anticipate. Understanding how it works, what makes it succeed, and what most commonly goes wrong, gives families who choose this route the best chance of it working well.
Healthbooq (healthbooq.com) covers childcare options and decisions across the early years, helping families understand the full range of arrangements and their respective implications.
How a Nanny Share Works
In a nanny share, a nanny is employed by two or more families simultaneously to care for all their children together during shared sessions. Most commonly, the care takes place in one family's home, alternating between homes, or primarily in one home with occasional use of the other.
The nanny is paid by each family separately. Each family is a separate employer and has separate legal obligations including PAYE (pay as you earn income tax and National Insurance), a written employment contract, and statutory holiday and sick pay entitlements. This is important and often underestimated: both families are employers in their own right, not just contributors to a shared cost.
The nanny's gross wage is agreed as a total, and each family pays their share of that total plus their own employer's National Insurance contributions on top. A nanny earning £15 gross per hour in a two-family share would receive £7.50 per hour from each family, plus each family would pay employer's National Insurance on their £7.50. HMRC's online calculator can estimate the employer costs for any given wage level.
Most families use a payroll service (Nannytax, Paye for Nannies, and similar services) to manage the administrative burden rather than doing it themselves.
Finding the Other Family
Finding the right family to share with is the most important decision in setting up a nanny share. Compatibility matters more than many parents expect.
The practical compatibility questions include: similar working hours and days needed, children who are compatible in age and personality, similar geographic location to keep the logistics manageable, and similar approach to childcare costs and nanny wage expectations.
The philosophical compatibility questions are equally important: similar approaches to routine versus flexibility, similar views on screen time, diet, outdoor time and risk tolerance, similar expectations about activities and outings, and similar ideas about what the nanny's role includes (purely childcare, or does it include nursery runs, light domestic tasks, children's laundry).
Finding a second family is often done through NCT groups, nursery networks, or local parent Facebook groups. Some nannies facilitate introductions themselves when they are looking for a share.
The Employment Contract
Each family needs their own employment contract with the nanny. Some employment lawyers and nanny agencies specialise in this area and can provide template contracts. Nannytax and similar services also offer contract templates.
The contract should specify: duties and hours for that family's sessions, location of care, wage and payment schedule, holiday entitlement and how it is accrued and taken (including what happens if the two families want different holiday weeks), sick pay, notice periods, and crucially, what happens if one family leaves the arrangement.
The exit clause is the most commonly neglected element. What notice does a departing family give? What happens to the nanny's employment if one family leaves? If the nanny's hours and income drop significantly when one family exits, there may be a redundancy payment obligation. These questions are not comfortable to address at the beginning of a relationship but they are considerably less comfortable to address in a crisis.
Practicalities of the Shared Environment
Nanny shares introduce complexity around equipment, activities, and rules that do not exist when a nanny is employed by one family alone.
Whose pram, whose car seat, whose high chair? These questions need to be resolved in advance. Some families buy shared equipment jointly (with a clear agreement about what happens to it when the arrangement ends). Others use one family's equipment for sessions at that family's home and the other family's at theirs.
The children need to be compatible enough to spend significant time together. Very different sleep schedules, very different dietary needs, or very different temperaments that regularly produce conflict all add complexity to the nanny's day. The children's compatibility is worth assessing honestly before committing.
Rules and routines ideally should be aligned enough that the nanny is not consistently applying incompatible standards from one family to the other. The nanny who cannot give one child a biscuit without the other demanding one, or who is expected to put one child to sleep while maintaining the other's no-nap schedule, is working in an unnecessarily difficult environment.
The Legal Bits Parents Must Know
Both families are employers. This means:
Registering as an employer with HMRC and operating PAYE from the first pay day. Enrolling the nanny in a workplace pension (if they earn above the auto-enrolment threshold, which most nannies do). Providing a payslip every pay period. Paying statutory sick pay if the nanny is ill. Providing the statutory minimum holiday entitlement (28 days pro rata including bank holidays for full-time, adjusted for the hours each family employs). Providing a written statement of employment particulars within two months of the start date.
None of this is optional and HMRC does investigate nanny employment. The penalties for undisclosed nanny employment are significant.
Key Takeaways
A nanny share is an arrangement where two or more families share a nanny's time and cost, typically having the children looked after together in one of the families' homes. It offers a middle ground between home-based care and group settings, reducing cost while maintaining low adult-to-child ratios. Nanny shares require careful legal and practical setup, including a shared understanding of employment terms, consistent parenting philosophies, and a clear plan for what happens when the arrangement breaks down. Both families are employers and must meet their respective legal obligations.
