Child Trust Fund Statistics

Child Trust Funds

The Child Trust Fund (CTF) is a savings and investment account for all children living in the UK, born on or after 1st September 2002; for whom child benefit has been awarded. The Government starts the account with an initial payment of between £256 and £277 for all children born between 1st September 2002 and 5th April 2005. All children born after 5th April 2005 receive an initial payment of £250. An additional payment of £250 is made for children in low income families. There will be a further payment when the children turn seven and an additional payment for those children in low income families.

The CTF is a long term savings and investment account for children and children will not be able to access the money until they reach 18 when the account matures. Parents, family, friends and the child can make contributions into a CTF account to a maximum of £1,200 per year, Government payments into accounts do not impact on this limit. For further information about the CTF please see Child Trust Fund.

CTF accounts are opened with the voucher from the Government. The first vouchers were issued in January 2005. The quarterly statistics report the number of vouchers issued in the stated period and how many of those vouchers have been used by parents to open an account to date together with the respective percentage. The information on the tables is derived from the number of accounts opened as reported by providers to HMRC.

Most providers operate a ‘cooling off’ period of between 14 and 31 days when first presented with CTF voucher; during this period the account cannot be reported as opened to HMRC. This means that the number of accounts opened is always less than the number of vouchers already presented to providers and awaiting the end of the cooling off period.

Parents have one year to open an account from the date the voucher is issued. Parents can choose to open their child’s account in one of the three types designed for the CTF scheme, a stakeholder or non-stakeholder, the latter can be opened as either a shares or cash account. Further information can be found at Child Trust Fund. If they do not open an account within a year HMRC will arrange for a Revenue Allocated Account to be opened for the child, this will be a stakeholder account. HMRC rotates through a list of CTF provides who accept and open accounts for children whose parents do not use the voucher before its expiry date.

The Detailed Distributional Analysis published in October 2007 is based on the annual provider returns of April 2007 which has been linked to Child Benefit and New Tax Credit data. It provides a wide range of data on the CTF. Account opening rates and types of accounts are shown by reference to a range of factors, namely:

  • Contributions to accounts
  • Market value of accounts
  • Household income
  • Geographical region
  • Number of adults/children in the household
  • Accounts receiving the additional payment award (for lower income families)

The following statistics do not fall under the scope of National Statistics.

Quarterly vouchers and accounts

Detailed Distributional Analysis

Notes

Index and tables

Enquiries and Further Information

Enquiries about statistics on Child Trust Fund should be addressed to KAI Analysis, Room 1/38, 100 Parliament Street, London, SW1A 2BQ.