Official Statistics

Introduction to Child Benefit small area data

Published 29 April 2022

1. Introduction

1.1 What is Child Benefit?

Child Benefit is a payment that you can claim for your child. It is usually paid every four weeks but in some cases can be paid weekly. The payment can be claimed by anyone who qualifies.

As of January 2013, claimants may be liable to a tax charge called the High-Income Child Benefit Charge (HICBC). Being liable for this charge does not affect a child’s entitlement but any Child Benefit recipient is liable to repay some or all of their Child Benefit back if they or their partner has an individual income of more than £50,000 per year.

For every additional £100 over the £50,000 threshold that an individual earns, the tax charge due increases by 1%. This means that any recipient whose income (or partner’s income) is £60,000 or higher will be liable to repay their entire Child Benefit entitlement. Alternatively, claimants affected by the HICBC have the option to opt-out of receiving Child Benefit, thereby ceasing their payments.

Child Benefit is paid to those responsible for children (aged under 16) or qualifying young people. The latter includes those who meet one or more of the following:

• in full-time non-advanced education or (from April 2006) on certain approved vocational training courses and who are under 19, or are aged 19 and have been on the same course since their 19th birthday (note: those reaching 19 up to 9 April 2006 ceased to qualify on their 19th birthday)

• entered for future external examinations, or are in the period between leaving education (or exams finishing) and the week containing the first Monday in September (or similar dates after Easter and in early January, if earlier), and are not in work (there are slight variations for Scotland)

• aged under 18 who have moved directly from full-time education to being registered for work or training with the Careers service or with Connexions

Note: Full-time non-advanced education: Full-time education is more than 12 hours supervised study a week in normal term-time, not counting breaks for meals and homework. Non-advanced is not above the Advanced Level of the General Certificate of Education (GCE A-Level) or the Advanced Higher Grade and Higher Grade of the Scottish Certificate of Education (SCE Advanced Highers/ Highers) or SCOTVEC National Certificate/Diploma (ONC/OND) or GNVQ level 3 or equivalent.

You can receive Child Benefit for a child that does not live with you. However, if your child lives with someone else, you can only receive Child Benefit if:

• you pay towards the upkeep of your child

• what you pay is at least the same as the amount of Child Benefit you get for your child

• the person bringing up your child is not getting Child Benefit for them - if you and another person both claim Child Benefit for the same child, only one of you can receive it

You can also claim Child Benefit for a child even if you’re not their parent, but you have to be responsible for them to qualify.

Awards are also subject to residence criteria being satisfied. Under UK domestic law a family is eligible to receive Child Benefit if they are present and ordinarily resident in the UK. Citizens of European Economic Area (EEA) countries are able to claim Child Benefit as long as they meet the requirements of the right to reside test, which amongst other requirements means that they must generally be in employment, in self-employment, be self-sufficient, or be a student. From 30 June 2021, families from EEA countries are required to apply for European settled status to continue receiving or make a new Child Benefit claim.

There are two separate amounts, with a higher amount for your eldest (or only) child and a lower amount for each of your other children. Following a 4 year freeze in Child Benefit payments between 2016 to 2017 and 2019 to 2020, and a 1.7% rise in tax year 2020 to 2021, Child Benefit payments have risen by 0.5% in tax year 2021 to 2022. This has resulted in Child Benefit payments increasing from £21.05 to £21.15 per week for the eldest child, and for each subsequent child increasing from £13.95 to £14.00 per week.

For further information about who can claim please refer to the HMRC website.

1.2 What does this publication tell me?

This publication details the number of families claiming Child Benefit payments as at 31 August 2021, the number, gender and ages of children within those families and their geographical location.

Summary population counts are provided by:

• country

• electoral ward

• English region

• Lower Layer Super Output Area (LSOA) for England

• Super Output Area (SOA) for Northern Ireland

• Scottish Data Zones

The higher level geographical counts are replicated from the main geographical National Statistics publication.

Please note that the figures will include some claimants that are subject to the HICBC and have chosen to continue receiving Child Benefit payments and repay their liability through an income tax charge, as such claimants are not separately identifiable from unaffected claimants.

This publication does not include those that have opted out of receiving Child Benefit payments. Breakdowns of HICBC opt-out figures for this publication are not possible, due to the low level geographies involved. High level HICBC opt-out information is available within the Geographical tables.

The statistics are as close to real-time as possible and represent the complete picture as at the 31 August, including back-dated awards with a start date on or before 31 August.

1.3 LSOA’s, SOA’s and Data Zones

The standard geography used to report small area data in England and Wales is the LSOA. These are built from groups of Output Areas used in the 2011 Census. More information on the creation of these boundaries can be found on the ONS website.

Similarly, for Scotland the key small area geography is called the Data Zone and as with LSOA’s in England and Wales they nest within local authority boundaries. Figures have been provided for areas determined from the 2011 Census. More information can be found at the Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics website.

The key small area geography for Northern Ireland is the SOA, which also nest within local authority boundaries. Figures have been provided for areas determined from the 2011 Census. More information can be found on the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) website.

The data is grouped first by local authority and then by LSOA, SOA or Data Zone for each region in England, Wales, Scotland and for Northern Ireland. They are presented in alphabetical order by name within these groups.

1.4 Electoral wards

Child Benefit Statistics for August 2021 are presented by electoral wards for the UK, using the ward boundaries available from the National Statistics Postcode Look-up Directory (NSPL). More information on the NSPL used can be found in 2.2 Geographical allocation.

1.5 Who might be interested?

The statistics contained in this publication will be of interest for anyone that is looking for the latest possible data on Child Benefit. Specifically, there are statistics on the number of children, by age band, in each geographical area. User consultation has shown that these statistics are used mainly by local government followed by central government and academics.

As previously mentioned, due to the low geographies within this publication, we have not included figures for families that have opted out of receiving Child Benefit payments and the children within those families. Furthermore, we are unable to provide figures on those that have chosen not to claim Child Benefit due to the introduction of the HICBC. This means that the child population (up to 16) within Child Benefit may not continue to be as useful a proxy for the child population as a whole in future years.

1.6 User engagement

Bespoke analysis of Child Benefit data is possible although there may be a charge depending on the level of complexity and the resources required to produce. If you would like to discuss your requirements, to comment on the current publications, or for further information about the Child Benefit statistics please use the contact information at the beginning of this publication.

We are committed to improving the Official Statistics we publish. We want to encourage and promote user engagement, so we can improve our statistical outputs. We would welcome any views you have using the contact information at the beginning of this publication.

2. Appendix: Background information

2.1 Administrative data

This publication follows the transition to the use of a new Child Benefit data stream in HMRC sourced from the Child Benefit System (CBS). The data refers to the number of families receiving Child Benefit payments (and their eligible dependents) and is derived from two 100% scans from the CBS.

The data represents a snapshot at a point in time of all claimants and eligible dependents in the UK present on the CBS, as at 31 August 2021, plus back-dated awards with a start date on or before 31 August. This is because Child Benefit awards can be backdated for up to 3 months. It excludes a small number of cases that are held clerically.

As well as family counts, the number of children in the family and the age and gender of the children are also given. Counts are provided for countries, English regions, UK electoral wards, LSOA, SOA for Northern Ireland and Scottish Data Zones.

Although the information is collected for administrative purposes, the data is used for a variety of statistical purposes for example, child population estimations, by HMRC, other government departments and relevant stakeholders.

2.2 Geographical allocation

The transition to the new Child Benefit System (CBS) has led to improvements in the designatory information that accompanies the Child Benefit data. Therefore, there are more up to date claimant postcodes in this publication, when compared to earlier publications.

In previous years, Child Benefit and tax credits data was matched together and in the event of a discrepancy, the postcode recorded on the tax credits system was used in the first instance since this was typically more up-to-date. If the postcode was missing in the tax credits system the postcode from the Child Benefit system was used.

For the August 2021 publication, the postcode recorded on the Child Benefit system has been used in the first instance. It is only if the postcode was missing on this system, has it been matched to the tax credits system to extract a postcode if available.

Once the postcode was identified, the geographical details were obtained from the ONS’ National Statistics Postcode Look-up (NSPL). All geographical boundaries are derived from Census 2011 data and have been taken from the August 2021 NSPL.

Geographical areas are allocated to an area code which was implemented from 1 January 2011, in line with the Government Statistical Service (GSS) Coding and Naming policy.