CCM18300 - Child Benefit and Tax Credits: Child Trust Fund - Types of Child Benefit Intelligence Discovered in Claimant Compliance Centres which May Affect Eligibility to Child Trust Fund

When a Claimant Compliance Officer (CCO) decides that there has never been entitlement to Child Benefit (ChB), then the Child Trust Fund System (CTFS) is alerted. This is done by an automatic notification sent by CB2 Index (prior to CB2 Go Live), or by CB2 (post CB2 Go Live). If there is no award to Child Benefit then there is no eligibility to receive a CTF voucher and the Child Trust Fund Office will make arrangements with the relevant financial institution to recover the payment.

Examples of when ChB should not have been awarded:

• it is discovered that a child was non-resident at date of award;
• the child does not exist;
• the claimant does not exist;
• cases of organised fraud/hi-jacked identity.

If the discovery shows there was never entitlement to ChB and this relates to a single, isolated case, then the automatic notification to the Child Trust Fund System is sufficient. If, however, enquiries following the initial discovery lead to more than one case being linked together (for example, multiple cases of hi-jacked identities claiming for non-existent children which could stem from a single source) then the Child Trust Fund Office need to be alerted to possible organised fraud.