Child Trust Fund Reconciliation Status

as at 13 May 2022

The report below shows the current state of reconciliation of Child Trust Fund (CTF) records (with a responsible adult) at 13 May 2022, following The Share Foundation taking responsibility for this part of the CTF scheme from the Official Solicitors/Accountant of Court in October 2017. As of 13 May 2022 a total 24,071 accounts (9th March 2018: 3,423) have been fully reconciled, thereby linking local authority entitlement records to accounts held at specific CTF providers: we estimate that this is over 95% (9th March 2018: <25%) of the total expected. Of this number, over 5,500 have now left care and have access to their accounts and a further 1,500 have left care under the age of 18.

Where we cannot locate a match with the CTF provider information transferred to The Share Foundation from the Official Solicitors/Accountants of Court, we submit entitlement records for those with no registered contact to HM Revenue & Customs to obtain this information. Thus far, for the local authorities who have provided their information these amount to over 26,000 CTF provider enquiries (9th March 2018: 6,517) over the past 5 years. We then receive account provider information from HM Revenue & Customs, and using this information we have been able to match young people with their account in over 95% of cases.

Where the match is found we then supply the account provider with our details as registered contact and, on receipt of their reference, set up the active account on our system. Further local authority enquiries are made for the still unreconciled accounts, before setting up a new Junior ISA for those where no CTF exists (e.g. for refugee children).

We are very grateful to HMRC and the local authorities for their help in reconciling these accounts, aware that the oldest Child Trust Fund recipients reached 18 in September 2020, and that we are unable to provide the benefits of our Stepladder of Achievement programme for unreconciled beneficiaries.