The Childcare Payments (Eligibility) Regulations 2015

Explanatory Note

(This note is not part of the Regulations)

These Regulations contain the detailed requirements a person must satisfy in order to be able to receive top-up payments under the Childcare Payments Act 2014 (c. 28) (“the Act”) in respect of childcare costs.

Regulations 1 and 2 provide for citation, commencement and interpretation.

Regulation 3 describes the circumstances where a person is regarded as another person's partner for the purposes of the Act.

Regulation 4 describes the circumstances where a person is regarded as responsible for a child for the purposes of the Act. This is usually the person (or one of the persons) with whom the child lives. The regulation also describes where a person is not to be so regarded, such as where the child is absent from the person's household for at least 6 months or is detained in custody, in local authority care or placed for adoption.

Regulation 5 gives the meaning of qualifying child, broadly a child under 12 years old or, if disabled, 17 years old. It also describes what is meant by “disabled child”.

Regulations 6 to 8 specify the circumstances in which a person is to be treated as being, or not being, in the United Kingdom so as to meet the condition in section 8 of the Act. Regulation 6 specifies when temporary absence from the UK is disregarded in determining whether the condition is met. Regulations 7 and 8 describe the persons regarded as meeting the condition, including armed forces members posted overseas, and those who don't meet the condition, including persons not ordinarily resident in the UK and those subject to immigration control or taxed in another jurisdiction.

Regulations 9 to 13 concern the condition in section 9 that a person (and partner) must be in qualifying paid work. Regulation 9 defines qualifying paid work in terms of a minimum weekly income, calculated in accordance with regulation 10. Regulation 11 contains an exception to the condition in relation to start-up periods for self-employed persons. Regulation 12 treats certain persons as satisfying the condition during periods when they receive statutory sick pay, maternity or paternity pay or when a person is on statutory leave for reasons connected with the birth or adoption of a child. Regulation 13 contains similar provision for periods when a person's partner is working but the person is incapable of working and in receipt of statutory benefits such as incapacity benefit, disablement allowance or carer's allowance.

Regulation 14 defines “work” for the purposes of the requirement that childcare must be qualifying childcare and specifies cases when persons are to be treated as in work for those purposes.

Regulation 15 specifies the maximum level of income for eligibility under the Act, including special provision for persons who are not domiciled in the UK and who are subject to the remittance basis for income tax.

Regulation 16 provides for the condition in section 11 (neither the person nor the person's partner may be claiming universal credit) to apply in relation to a person working in the United Kingdom who is receiving, from another EEA state, a credit which is similar to universal credit.

Regulation 17 provides for the condition in sections 12 and 13 (the person must not be in a relevant childcare scheme nor be receiving other childcare support) to apply to an EEA resident who is working in the United Kingdom or that person's partner.

Regulation 18 supplements the power of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs to disqualify a person from obtaining top-up payments at the same time as either tax credits or universal credit. It sets out the changes in a person's circumstances for which a claim to both top-up payments and one of the other credits may be justified, so that the requirements for disqualification are not met.

A full Impact Assessment of the effect that the childcare payments scheme will have on the costs of business and the voluntary sector is available from the gov.uk website at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tax-free-childcare-impact-assessment. It remains an accurate summary of the impacts that apply to this instrument.