Official Statistics

Background information and methodology

Published 8 July 2026

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

Context of the statistics

What is Universal Credit?

Universal Credit (UC) supports people both in and out of work. It replaces 6 legacy benefits:

• Child Tax Credit
• Housing Benefit
• Income Support
• income-related Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA)
• income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)
• Working Tax Credit

Read further information about Universal Credit, including making a claim.

What is the two child limit policy?

Between 6 April 2017 and 5 April 2026, families on Universal Credit or Child Tax Credit were able to claim support for up to two children. In Universal Credit this means the amount of child element that the household receives. There was further entitlement for third or subsequent children if they were born before 6 April 2017 or if an exception applies.

Child Tax Credit closed in April 2025, which means the two child limit policy only applied to Universal Credit from April 2025.

In earlier publications this policy has been referred to as “the policy to provide support for a maximum of two children”.

What are the exceptions to the policy?

There were four categories of exception:

• additional children in a multiple birth where an extra amount was payable for all children in a multiple birth other than the first child
• likely to have been born as a result of non-consensual conception, which for this purpose included rape or where the claimant was in a controlling or coercive relationship with the child’s other biological parent at the time of conception

An exception also applies for any children in a household who are:

• adopted when they would otherwise be in local authority care
• in non-parental caring arrangements when they would otherwise be at risk of entering the care system, including where a child (under 16) has a child

On 28 November 2018 exceptions for non-parental care and adoption arrangements were extended to apply to any eligible children in a household.

Read further information on the policy and the exceptions in Universal Credit.

Who is likely to see an increase to their Universal Credit award from the removal of the two child limit?

Only households that were not receiving a child element for at least one child can possibly see an increase in their UC award from the removal of the two child limit. This means that households that already have exceptions to the policy for all of their children will not see an increase to their Universal Credit award following the removal of the policy.

The Universal Credit award is calculated monthly, based on the circumstances of the household including earnings. As this can change month to month the amount of UC received by claimants can also change month to month. To assess which households are likely to see an increase to their Universal Credit award, we have assumed for this release of statistics that the earnings and other circumstances remained constant until the two child limit policy was removed. This therefore assumes that the amount of Universal Credit received by the claimant remains constant except for any additional amount of child element that the household receives, which is £303.94 per child that was not receiving a child element per month.

With these assumptions in place the amount of child element of Universal Credit will increase by £303.94 per child that was not previously receiving a child element per month. Despite the increase in child element for these households, the there are two reasons why a household would not receive an increase in their Universal Credit award.

• The household is affected by the benefit cap. This means that the household is already receiving the maximum amount of benefit they are entitled to each month.
• The household has a larger transitional protection element of Universal Credit than the amount that the child element of Universal Credit will increase by. This means that for every child not receiving a child element due to the two child limit, the household has more than £303.94 in transitional protection element. When the two child limit is lifted, the transitional protection element will decrease by an equal amount to the increase in child element, and therefore there is no net change to the Universal Credit award.

Some households that will receive an increase in their Universal Credit award will not receive the full amount of £303.94 per child per month. This is due to the increase in the UC child element raising their total benefit entitlement above the benefit cap threshold, or due to the household having a smaller amount of transitional protection which would be eroded first. In either case these household will still see some increase in their Universal Credit award as a result of the removal of the two child limit policy. We are unable to provide breakdowns for those that will not receive the full amount as this calculation would require additional methodological assumptions.

What is transitional protection?

Transitional Protection is a safeguard put in place by the Department to ensure a smooth transition from legacy benefits to Universal Credit for those included in the move to Universal Credit programme. There are three forms of Transitional Protection; Transitional Element, Student Disregard and Capital Disregard.

The level of Transitional Protection varies between households and, in some cases, can form a significant proportion of the overall award.

Transitional Protection is a temporary measure not intended to permanently replicate benefit entitlement and therefore it reduces over time where a claimant’s underlying Universal Credit entitlement increases. From the second assessment period onwards, the amount of the Transitional Protection will be reduced by the addition or increase of any Universal Credit element (other than the childcare costs element) to gradually align the award with those of new customers who are in the same circumstances.

Where underlying entitlement increases, Transitional Protection is reduced by an equivalent amount. This means households will not see a monetary increase in their Universal Credit award until Transitional Protection has eroded in full.

This includes circumstances where policy changes increase entitlement, such as the removal of the Two Child Limit. While the addition of further child elements increases a household’s underlying Universal Credit entitlement, this increase may be offset by a corresponding reduction in Transitional Protection. As a result, households with higher levels of Transitional Protection may not experience an immediate increase in their overall UC award.

Transitional element is an additional amount, awarded to ensure customers do not receive a lower entitlement on Universal Credit than they had on legacy benefit(s).

Read further information on How the transitional element is calculated when you move to Universal Credit.

Purpose of the statistics

Who might be interested?

The statistics contained in this publication will be of interest for anyone that is looking for information on the impact of the policy to provide support for a maximum of two children, and the exceptions.

What does this publication tell me?

This publication shows the number of households (single or couple households with any dependent children or young people) affected by the two child limit policy. Households are counted as on Universal Credit if they have an open UC claim within the month of April 2026.

Households are considered to be affected by the policy if they have a third or subsequent child to their household born on or after 6 April 2017, including those for whom an exception applies.

This publication also shows the number of households that were likely to see an increase in their Universal Credit award when the two child limit was lifted.

Purpose of the statistics

The statistics in this publication relate to the policy which has been in operation since 6 April 2017. In future years, more households with two or more children claiming UC will have a child who has been born on or after 6 April 2017, and so the numbers affected will increase over time.

The publication does not contain information relating to those who have applied for an exception but have not met the criteria to qualify. Once claimants have submitted supporting documents which meet the eligibility criteria for an exception, the exception will be granted and there are no circumstances in which an exception would not be granted where the correct supporting documents have been provided.

Limitations of the statistics

The region and local authority information is derived from the claimant residential address, and this is not present for all households in the UC data source. Therefore, there is a small number of households with unknown region and local authority information. For the small number of Universal Credit cases where the postcode information was not available the country of the Job Centre the claimants was allocated to has been used. Further information on the National Statistics Postcode Look-up can be found on the ONS website.

This release includes information on ethnicity and gender. This is being released as statistics in development. We welcome feedback from users on this and other developments.

Statistics on ethnicity and ethnic group are based on the responses of claimants from Universal Credit Equality questions. It is not mandatory for claimants to answer these questions, and so data is not held for those claimants that have not responded. The volumes of households where at least one claimant did not respond or responded “prefer not to say” have been included in these statistics as “unspecified” for the particular question they did not answer.

Rounding

The figures have been rounded to the nearest 10, or nearest 1%. Low numbers including zero are suppressed in accordance with disclosure rules. This can lead to components as shown not summing to totals. Low numbers including zero are suppressed in accordance with disclosure rules, as is demographic information where the response rate did not meet the threshold for publication. This can lead to components as shown not summing to totals.

Comparisons between the statistics

The publication includes figures on the number of households with dependent children or eligible young people, whereas data available on Stat-Xplore includes all children or young people declared in a household on UC who are under 20 and whose details are verified by DWP. Therefore, there will be differences when looking at the number of households with 3 or more children between this publication and data available through Stat-Xplore. On Stat-Xplore, the total number of children may not be equal to the number of dependent children in the household who are eligible for child element for various reasons, including children over the age of 16 in non-advanced full-time education, looked-after children and, other young people living in multigenerational households whose parents are not the claimant.

Source of the statistics

The data for Universal Credit is fully sourced from administrative data covering UC Full Service only and contains households with an open Universal Credit claim within the month of April 2026. UC Live Service are therefore excluded for figures produced prior to April 2019.

Definitions and terminology within the statistics

The analysis covers all UC claims that have declared a third or subsequent child as being born on or after 6 April 2017. The number of eligible children declared was compared to the number of children paid for as part of their April payment. If there is a difference, they have been impacted by the policy and if there is no difference then they have received an exception.

A UC claim’s in-work status is determined by having positive take home earnings included in their April statement.

Postcode information for claimants were combined with geographical details obtained from the Office for National Statistics’ National Statistics Postcode Look-up (NSPL). England, Scotland and Wales data represent geographical boundaries derived from Census 2021 data and has been taken from the NSPL.

Revisions to the statistics

This year’s release includes new breakdowns for Universal Credit households. Where possible, we have also calculated these values monthly from May 2017 to May 2026. Data for May 2026 only includes assessment periods that ended up to the 5th of May 2026 as this is the last date that a UC household could be affected by the policy (this date aligns with assessment periods starting before 6th of April 2026). For this reason, and to align with the previous releases, all other data is for April 2026. As the figures for all months other than April are new, we have also recalculated the previously published Universal Credit data for April from previous years.

Any CTC data in the publication has been released in previous releases of the statistics.

Status of the statistics

Official Statistics

These are Official Statistics. There is ongoing development of the data systems used to support Universal Credit and as such, the methodologies used to produce these statistics are constantly monitored and is subject to revision as improved data sources become available.

Child Tax Credit

Previous releases of these statistics included data on Child Tax Credits, which ended in April 2025.

Quality Statement

Validation and quality assurance processes

Universal Credit statistics have been continually monitored over the past year and comparison of previous month snapshots have shown a consistent proportion of claims have been affected by the policy. Internal departmental quality assurance checks have been carried out to reassure the reliability of the statistics. Figures have also been compared to the number of claims with children declared to contextualise the percentage of UC claims which have been affected.

Feedback

We welcome 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 using the contact information below:

DWP Press Office

For media enquiries, please contact the DWP press office.

Statistical contacts

S Lewis, A Snowsill: ucad.briefinganalysis@dwp.gov.uk

We are only able to reply to questions about the statistics.

Useful links

Collection page for all releases of these statistics

Collection: Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit claimants: statistics related to the policy to provide support for a maximum of 2 children

This release

Universal Credit claimants statistics, 2026

Previous releases

Universal Credit claimants statistics, 2025

Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit claimants statistics, 2024

Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit claimants statistics, 2023

Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit claimants statistics, 2022

Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit claimants statistics, 2021

Child Tax Credit and Universal Credit claimants statistics, 2020

Child Tax Credit and Universal Credit claimants statistics, 2019

Child Tax Credit and Universal Credit claimants statistics, 2018

Supporting guides

Read further information about Universal Credit, including making a claim.