Taxe free childcare and UC

Are you talking about the tax free childcare account? You can't have both the account and UC, if you wanted the childcare account, you would have to close your UC. To be honest I would wait and see if how much you can claim through UC, they pay up to 85% of childcare costs back to you. I work 32 hours a week and claim UC, without the childcare, I would only get £100 but I also get most of my childcare costs back so I get more. Have you applied for the funded hours?

Hi Tania, thanks for your response I’m not British so I don’t really understand how does it work. I have a free childcare that i used for my first child which is in primary school now. I wanted to use the same account and apply for my twins who are 2 years. I currently receive benefits from UC but I think that I would definitely need support to pay for their childcare. I have not applied yet for the funded hours ?

You can not claim benefits for UC and have the tax free childcare account, you can have 1 or the other. UC is the better one if you can get it as you get up to 85% back of your costs, you just have to report them under the 'report childcare costs' section on your account and then you will be asked to upload proof of the invoice and payment (I upload the invoice and a bank statement). You have just missed to apply for funding hours for the January - March term so you'll have to do for do it for the April term, as they are 2 years old you should be able to get 15 hours funded, check with their nursery if they accept just funded hours or if you have to be over the funded hours so you pay some. For my nursery you had to put them in for longer than the funded hours and it's not 15 hours per week, they divide by the whole term so i got like 9hrs a week funded so check that also. You just have to search for the funded hours on the government website.

Thank you so much, that the clearest answer I had since this morning 😅 I didn’t know that you could apply directly with UC to help pay for childcare cost. I thought that you had to apply for tax free childcare account only.

Your welcome Its definitely the most help with childcare after the funded hours. You just have to make sure your nursery is a registered nursery. You get the money back the month after so for my December bill which I paid at the beginning of December I got it back in my January UC payment so you will have to make sure you have the money to cover it for the month or 2 before the money comes back.

And you can apply at any time I mean do I don’t need a starting for or anything like that ? Im registering with agencies so I don’t know when I should be starting but I need the childcare to be sorted out first !

If I wanted to use the funded hours, I will need to apply for a childcare code right ?

You will need a starting date, funded hours are for working parents so you will need to be working or have a starting date and it has to be within so long otherwise you don't get the funded hours for that term.

Thank you so much!