Child Trust Fund...Advice needed please!

miapops

Hoping somebody may be able to give me some advice and further guidance. 

I have been helping my daughters partner to try and locate his child trust fund. (He was born 30/09/2002)

Just as background, he lived with his parents when he was younger, but then lived with grandparents during his teenage years.

As far as he was aware, child benefit was claimed by his parents from birth, and then by his Nan when he moved to live with her.

We have followed all the details on the MSE website to try and locate the trust fund, but have now received a letter from HMRC to say they have no record of a child benefit claim for him until after Jan 2011. 

We are a bit stuck on what to do next. He is sure it was claimed by his parents from 2002, but has no contact with them to be able to confirm this. I wonder if the change in claimant in his teenage years has caused the glitch in his record? We are struggling to find any way to contact HMRC to get any answers, and now aged 22 and a student, he would really like to locate the missing fund to help get him started in life.

I would appreciate any advice on what we can do next to help him locate the missing fund.

Flugelhorn

Is the child trust fund linked to child benefit? I thought it was a one off payment (?250) into a fund that parents could then add to (some did, some didn't)

ThePirates

Try here? https://www.gov.uk/child-trust-funds/find-a-child-trust-fund

xylophone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_trust_fund

The Child Trust Fund scheme was promised in the Labour Party's 2001 general election manifesto[3] and launched in January 2005, with children born on or after 1 September 2002 eligible.[4]

Eligible children received an initial subscription from the government in the form of a voucher for at least £250. 

Every child born on or after 1 September 2002 was eligible for the CTF, as long as:

• child benefit has been awarded for them;
• they are living in the United Kingdom; and
• they are not subject to immigration controls

refluxer

I think I received the £250 cheque for my daughter automatically but she was born  after the scheme started. I'm not sure if the same will have happened for children born between September 2002 and January 2005 ?

If retrospective cheques were issued for those children, then it would have been up to the parents to open a CTF themselves but I've a feeling that if the cheque wasn't cashed by a certain point, then the government would open one on the child's behalf automatically. It might be worth reading up on this.

Either way, if no further money was paid into the account then it'll only have accrued interest (or growth in the case of a stocks and shares CTF) on that original £250, although I believe there were some circumstances where low-income families may have received an additional £250.