Official Statistics

Tax-Free Childcare Statistics Commentary March 2026

Published 27 May 2026

1. About this release

This is a quarterly publication of Tax-Free Childcare (TFC) statistics. Tax-Free Childcare provides help with childcare costs for working parents.

For every £8 a parent pays into their Tax-Free Childcare account the government will add an extra £2, up to a maximum of £2,000 per child per year. For disabled children the maximum is £4,000 per year.

Tax-Free Childcare and Department for Education funded hours

A key policy change affecting the use of Tax-free Childcare is the expansion of the Department for Education (DfE) 15 or 30 funded hours scheme in England.

In 2024, 15 hours funded childcare became available for the first time for children aged under 3. This was rolled out to children aged 2 in April 2024 and children aged over 9 months in September 2024.

A further expansion has made 30 hours funded childcare available to these age groups from September 2025. (For details on the funded hours scheme see: Best Start In Life)

For more information about Tax-Free Childcare see the summary information in the Background and Guidance note or visit guidance on Tax-Free Childcare on GOV.UK.

Publication Information

This is an official statistics publication. Statistical tables to accompany this commentary are available in the accompanying spreadsheet

Coverage: United Kingdom

Frequency of release: Quarterly

Next Release: August 2026

For queries or feedback on this publication, please contact: TFC Statistics

For press queries, please contact: HMRC Press Office

2. Summary

This release publishes new monthly data for January, February, and March 2026, and new yearly data for financial year 2025 to 2026. Key points for this release are:

• there were 601,000 families using TFC for 744,000 children in March 2026
• TFC account usage increased steadily through the first quarter of 2026, following reduced usage immediately after the September 2025 expansion of funded childcare
• the government spent £55 million on TFC top-up in March 2026, remaining below the July 2024 peak (£62.3 million)

3. Families and children using Tax-Free Childcare

Figure 1: Families using TFC accounts and government top-up paid (£m), by month

Key points of note from Figure 1 are:

• the number of families with used TFC accounts rose sharply in March 2026 to 601,000, the largest number of used accounts since the rollout of TFC, following an increase in January and decrease in February
• government top-up spending also followed a similar pattern, increasing at the end of the quarter in line with higher account usage. However, at £55 million, top-up in March 2026 is at a similar level to the same point last year, £55.3 million in March 2025, and remains lower than the three-year peak of £62.3 million in July 2024

3. Families and children using Tax-Free Childcare

Figure 2: Government top-up (£) per family using TFC, by month

Key points of note from Figure 2 are:

• monthly TFC top-up, as a per family average, reduced from £84 in January 2026 to £78 in February 2026, before rising to £92 in March
• at the beginning of the quarter average top-up per family remained lower than pre-September 2025 levels, this is a continuation of a downward trend in TFC top-up as the need for TFC is substituted by the DfE 30 hours funded childcare scheme and its subsequent expansions
• before the first expansion in April 2024 (see the Background and Guidance note for details of the expansions of this scheme) average top-up per family was £110 per month. This has decreased with each phase of the expansion and since the third phase in September 2025 the average monthly top-up is now £85 per family

5. Patterns by age group

Figure 3: Number of children with used TFC accounts by age group, by month

• usage for children aged 0 to 2 has remained fairly stable this quarter, after a gradual decrease over 2025
• usage for children aged 3 to 4 increased this quarter, particularly in March 2026 which saw a greater increase than the usual seasonal impacts for this time of year
• children aged 5 and over followed the trend of children aged 3 to 4, rising to their highest level since the implementation of TFC

6. Revisions and other changes

• a minor adjustment has been made to the overall totals for yearly data in Tables 8 to 13. These totals now match the totals in Tables 1 and 2, values for individual geographical areas are unchanged. This update removed the variations in summed totals that can be introduced due to rounding
• charts in this publication now show data starting from January 2023, to provide greater detail on more recent trends, and include lines to delineate the expansions of the DfE funded childcare offer
• the structure of this commentary has been revised to focus on key trends in the latest data; previous publications can be accessed at the Tax-Free Childcare quarterly statistics collections page