Official Statistics

Universal Credit claimants statistics on the two child limit policy, April 2025

Households on Universal Credit and the two-child policy, with additional data on benefit cap, disability benefits and demographics.

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

Documents

Data tables: Universal Credit claimants statistics on the two child limit policy, April 2025

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Details

This release of statistics is about the two child limit policy, which affects Universal Credit claimants and came into effect in April 2017. The release includes statistics relating to the exceptions to the policy.

Feedback

We are committed to improving the official statistics we publish. We want to encourage and promote user engagement, so we can improve our statistical outputs. We would welcome any views you have, by email: ucad.briefinganalysis@dwp.gov.uk

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Updates to this page

Published 10 July 2025
Last updated 29 July 2025 show all updates
  1. The .ods data tables have been updated. There are two changes, firstly an update to table 01 adding in an exception breakdown that was missing (this has been included in earlier publications and the figures are used in the main text), and secondly additional data for tables that include ethnicity to make it easier for users to calculate the percentages given in the main text (this is because we have had emails from users asking how we calculated the percentages).

  2. We have added an additional table to the Data Tables, showing historical caseloads for Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit combined.

  3. First published.

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