Healthy Start and Universal Credit: the £408 take-home pay rule

Healthy Start is an NHS scheme that helps pregnant women and families with young children on low incomes buy healthy food and milk. If you qualify, the NHS Business Services Authority posts you a prepaid card, and money is added to it every 4 weeks. From 6 April 2026 the weekly values are £4.65 for each week of pregnancy once you are more than 10 weeks pregnant, £9.30 for each child from birth to their first birthday, and £4.65 for each child aged 1 until their fourth birthday. The NHS Business Services Authority says the rise applied across England, Wales and Northern Ireland and was paid automatically to everyone already on the scheme. The law behind it is the Healthy Start Scheme and Welfare Food (Amendment) Regulations 2005. Regulation 8 lets the Secretary of State set the value of each weekly credit, with a floor of £3.10, and requires the value and start date to be published. A baby under 1 is worth double because both the mother and the baby count as beneficiaries under regulation 3, and a mother with twins under 1 gets the higher amount for each of them. Payments end at the child's fourth birthday. For a one-off payment towards a first baby, see the Sure Start Maternity Grant, and once your children start school, free school meals on Universal Credit.

You qualify through Universal Credit if you are more than 10 weeks pregnant or have at least one child under 4, you get Universal Credit, and your family's monthly take-home pay from work is £408 or less. The legal test is in regulation 3 of the 2005 Regulations. A pregnant woman aged 18 or over qualifies if she is entitled to Universal Credit, or is the responsibility of someone who is, and the earnings condition is met. A mother aged 16 or over with a child under 1 qualifies on the same terms, and so does each child under 4 who is the responsibility of a Universal Credit claimant who meets the condition. The earnings condition in regulation 3(8) is that a single claimant has earned income of £408 or less, or joint claimants have combined earned income of £408 or less. There is no separate test of savings or of your total Universal Credit award, and income from benefits does not count towards the £408. If you do not work at all, you meet the condition automatically as long as you get Universal Credit. The children must be on your Universal Credit claim: Healthy Start says payments start once your child has been verified and appears on your Universal Credit statement. The child element calculator shows what adding a new baby to your Universal Credit claim is worth, now that the two-child limit has ended. Low take-home pay on the same claim can also mean free prescriptions and dental treatment in England: the limit is £435 a month, or £935 with a child element or limited capability for work.

The limit uses earned income as Universal Credit itself calculates it, under Chapter 2 of Part 6 of the Universal Credit Regulations 2013. That is pay after income tax, National Insurance and pension contributions, plus any self-employed profit, but not benefits. The simplest way to check it is the one nidirect gives: look at the take-home pay for this period line on your monthly Universal Credit statement, which your Universal Credit statement explains line by line. Regulation 3(9) looks at two assessment periods. You meet the condition if your earned income was £408 or less in the most recent complete assessment period, or in the one before it. So one high month does not immediately stop Healthy Start. If you only qualify because of the earlier period, regulation 3(10) keeps you entitled until 8 weeks after the end of the latest complete assessment period. For a couple claiming jointly, the £408 applies to your combined earnings, not to each of you. Assessment periods run from your claim date, not calendar months, which assessment periods and payment dates explained covers. Healthy Start shares information with the benefits agencies every 4 weeks to check you still qualify, and if you stop qualifying the payments stop and you have 16 weeks to spend what is left on the card.

Yes, through separate routes. If you are under 18 and more than 10 weeks pregnant, you qualify without getting any benefit, under regulation 3(3)(b), unless your immigration status excludes you from benefits. You apply by email or phone, not online, and give your baby's due date, an official document, your NHS number and your National Insurance number. That entitlement lasts until your baby is born. After the birth you only keep Healthy Start if you get a qualifying benefit, so Healthy Start asks you to call them, update your Universal Credit account and make sure your baby is verified on the claim, then reapply online. Otherwise payments stop 4 weeks after the due date. If you get Pension Credit that includes the child addition, you qualify with no earnings test, again by email to healthy.start@nhsbsa.nhs.uk or by calling 0300 330 7010, 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday. If your family cannot claim public funds because of immigration status, you can still qualify if you have at least one British child under 4 and your family earns £408 or less a month after tax: email healthystartnrpf@nhsbsa.nhs.uk for a form. Most of the older benefits still named in the regulations have now been replaced by Universal Credit, and the scheme's own site lists only these routes.

The card buys four kinds of food: plain liquid cow's milk, infant formula based on cow's milk and labelled suitable from birth, fruit and vegetables that are fresh, frozen or tinned, and pulses such as beans, lentils, peas and chickpeas that are fresh, dried or tinned. The scheme rules exclude fruit and vegetables with added fat, salt, sugar or flavourings, juices, smoothies, fruit in syrup and anything pre-cooked. Milk must not be flavoured, coloured, evaporated, condensed, plant-based or powdered, apart from formula labelled suitable from birth. Follow-on formula, labelled from 6 months, is not allowed. You can use the card in most shops that sell these foods and show the Mastercard symbol, including supermarkets, corner shops, markets, pharmacies and petrol stations, contactless up to £45 or with chip and PIN up to £75 in one go. You cannot use it online, outside the UK, in a phone wallet, at a cash machine or for cashback. You can split a shop between the card and your own money, and at self-checkouts you can only split it with cash. Check your balance before you shop, at a cash machine or on 0118 338 5810, because you can only spend up to the balance on the card. Use it at least once every 16 weeks, or the NHS may close your claim.

Everyone on the scheme can also get free Healthy Start vitamins, and regulation 3(2)(b) makes them part of the entitlement. There are two products. Vitamin tablets containing folic acid, vitamin C and vitamin D are for you while you are pregnant and until your baby's first birthday. Vitamin drops containing vitamins A, C and D are for each child from birth until their fourth birthday. Healthy Start says a child having 500ml or more of infant formula a day does not need the drops, because formula already has vitamins added. The vitamins come as an 8-week supply of 56 tablets or 280 drops. In England and Wales, ask your midwife or health visitor where to collect them, and show your Healthy Start card when you do. England also has an NHS finder for local stockists, and in Wales some community pharmacies act as collection points. In Northern Ireland the system is different: after you join, the scheme writes or emails to explain how to request vitamins, then sends your order to the Business Services Organisation, which posts them to you. The letter should arrive within 10 working days of a successful application. The vitamins are only for you and your children, and the scheme rules say you cannot pass them on or sell them.

On Universal Credit you apply online through the Healthy Start website. You need your name, address, date of birth, National Insurance number, your baby's due date if you are pregnant, and your Universal Credit statement. The details you give must match your Universal Credit claim exactly, so check your address and postcode in your Universal Credit account first, and make sure every child is named and verified on the claim. A new baby has to be added to Universal Credit before Healthy Start can pay for them: payments start once the child appears on your statement, which can take up to 8 weeks after the child is verified, and Healthy Start asks you to get the child verified within 12 weeks of the due date to receive the correct amount. Reporting a change of circumstances covers adding a baby to your claim. Once you are accepted, the card should arrive by post within 10 working days, with the first payment already on it. You activate it and get your PIN by calling 0118 338 5810, a line open 24 hours a day. For help with the application itself, call 0300 330 7010. If you are on Pension Credit, under 18 without benefits, or have no recourse to public funds, you apply by email or phone instead, as set out above.

No. Healthy Start is a credit on an NHS card that can only be spent on set foods, not money paid to you, and it is not on the list of unearned income in regulation 66 of the Universal Credit Regulations 2013, which is the only income apart from earnings that reduces an award. The link runs the other way: Universal Credit and your earnings decide whether you get Healthy Start. Because the test is your take-home pay rather than your Universal Credit award, a pay rise can end Healthy Start while you still get Universal Credit. If your earned income goes over £408 in two assessment periods in a row, expect the four-weekly check to stop your payments. The same pay rise usually also reduces your Universal Credit through the taper, which the maternity allowance and Universal Credit calculator models for the months around a birth, including how Statutory Maternity Pay counts as earnings. Note that Statutory Maternity Pay counts as earned income for the £408 test too, because it counts as earnings for Universal Credit, while Maternity Allowance does not count towards the £408, because Universal Credit treats it as unearned income.

Healthy Start does not run in Scotland, and regulation 3(3A) stops anyone getting it for a week in which they are entitled to Best Start Foods. Social Security Scotland pays Best Start Foods instead, onto a prepaid card that, unlike the Healthy Start card, can be used in shops and online. It pays every 4 weeks: £22.40 during pregnancy, however many babies you are expecting, £44.80 for each child from birth to age 1, and £22.40 for each child aged 1 to 3. It stops at age 3, a year earlier than Healthy Start. Universal Credit is on mygov.scot's list of qualifying benefits, with no earnings figure given there, and if you are under 18 you do not need a benefit at all. You can apply as soon as you know you are pregnant, on the same form as the Best Start Grant and Scottish Child Payment. Northern Ireland runs Healthy Start under its own Healthy Start Scheme and Day Care Food Scheme Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2006, but with the same £408 take-home pay test, the same card and the same weekly values as England and Wales. The difference you will notice is vitamins, which are posted to you rather than collected. Universal Credit in Northern Ireland covers how the benefit itself differs there.