Sure Start Maternity Grant and Universal Credit: who gets the £500

The Sure Start Maternity Grant is a one-off payment of £500 to help with the costs of a new baby. It is paid from the social fund under the Social Fund Maternity and Funeral Expenses (General) Regulations 2005, and regulation 5(1) fixes the amount at £500 for each qualifying child or still-born child. The same regulations provide the Funeral Expenses Payment, which Universal Credit also qualifies you for. DWP pays it in England and Wales, and the Department for Communities pays it in Northern Ireland with its own claim form. You cannot get it in Scotland, where Social Security Scotland pays the Pregnancy and Baby Payment instead. The grant is not a loan and you never pay it back. It sits alongside the other money a new baby brings on Universal Credit: a new child element in your award, worked out by the child element calculator, and, if you are working or recently worked, Statutory Maternity Pay or Maternity Allowance, which the maternity allowance and Universal Credit calculator compares. If your family's take-home pay is low enough, Healthy Start and Universal Credit adds money for milk, fruit and vegetables once you are more than 10 weeks pregnant. If your baby is born after at least 24 weeks of pregnancy and is still-born, the grant can still be paid, because the regulations define confinement to include that.

You or your partner must have been awarded a qualifying benefit in respect of the date you claim the grant. Regulation 5(2) lists them, and gov.uk's current list is Universal Credit, income-related Employment and Support Allowance and Pension Credit, plus Support for Mortgage Interest loan payments where you are treated as getting one of the qualifying benefits. For Universal Credit the regulation says only that you have been awarded it. There is no earnings limit and no minimum amount, unlike the tax credit routes, which needed particular elements. So a working family on a small Universal Credit top-up qualifies on the same terms as a family with no earnings. Maternity Allowance and Statutory Maternity Pay are not qualifying benefits. DWP's claim notes say you can still apply if you get Maternity Allowance and one of the listed benefits. Child Benefit does not qualify either. The award can be yours or your partner's. If you are not getting a qualifying benefit yet, see the section below on claims still waiting for a decision.

Regulation 5A(4) says no grant is awarded if, on the date you claim, any existing member of your family is under 16. Family has a specific meaning: you, your partner if you have one, and any children who are members of your household and for whom one of you is responsible, which normally means getting Child Benefit for them or, if nobody does, the child usually living with you. So an older child under 16 living with you usually blocks the grant, as long as you or your partner are responsible for them. That includes your partner's own child from a previous relationship: the regulation only sets aside children who were not your child or your partner's child when they were born. A child who lives with their other parent and is not part of your household does not count. The rule looks at the date of the claim, not the date of the birth, so an older child who has already turned 16 by the time you claim no longer blocks it. The rule has several exceptions, which the next section sets out. The Universal Credit child element, by contrast, is now paid for every child since the two-child limit has ended.

There are four main exceptions. First, multiple births. If nobody else in your family is under 16, you get a grant for each baby, so £1,000 for twins and £1,500 for triplets. If you already have children under 16, all born from separate pregnancies, you get a grant for all but one of the new babies: £500 for twins, £1,000 for triplets. If you already have twins under 16, you get nothing for new twins and £500 for triplets. Second, a child you did not give birth to and took on when they were over 12 months old, for example through kinship care, does not count against you, provided they were not your child or your partner's child when born. Third, where a parent aged under 20 is part of your family, only that young parent's own children count. So if your daughter under 20 is having her first baby, her younger brothers and sisters do not stop a grant. Gov.uk describes this as claiming for a family member under 16, or aged 16 to 19 in approved education or training. Fourth, people who left Afghanistan because of the collapse of its government on 15 August 2021, or left Ukraine because of the Russian invasion of 24 February 2022, can get one grant even with older children under 16, under regulation 5A(8) to (10). DWP's guidance says the same applies to people with refugee status or humanitarian protection whose older children were born before they came to the UK.

Yes, if the baby is under 12 months old on the date you claim and you or your partner get a qualifying benefit. Regulation 5(3) covers five situations beyond giving birth yourself. A child under 12 months has been placed with you for adoption by an adoption agency. You have adopted a child under 12 months from abroad under an adoption recognised by the Adoption and Children Act 2002. You have been granted a qualifying order, which regulation 3A defines as an adoption order, a parental order (the order used after a surrogate birth) or a child arrangements order. You have been appointed the child's guardian. Or you are the baby's parent but not the mother, you and the mother are not partners, and you are responsible for the baby, which covers a father bringing the baby up alone. In most of these cases you must also be responsible for the baby, and the first-child rule still applies, with the same exceptions. The claim window is different: you have 6 months from the date the child is placed with you, the order is made or the guardianship takes effect, not from the birth. Only one grant is paid for each baby, so if the birth mother has already had a grant for this child, or a Scottish Best Start Grant, a second grant is only possible in the limited cases regulation 3A allows.

The window opens 11 weeks before the first day of the week your baby is due and closes 6 months after the actual birth, under Schedule 4 to the Social Security (Claims and Payments) Regulations 1987. There is no online claim in England and Wales. You print and fill in form SF100 from gov.uk, which cannot be completed on a phone or tablet, and post it to Freepost DWP SSMG, with no stamp or postcode needed. You also need evidence of the pregnancy or birth from a doctor or midwife, either form MAT B1 or a signed statement. If waiting for that would make you miss the deadline, send the form without it and DWP will contact you about the evidence later. DWP aims to write to you within 28 days of getting your form and evidence, and says it can take longer if you have recently made a new Universal Credit claim. The grant is paid into your bank, building society or credit union account. The Sure Start Maternity Grant helpline is 0800 169 0140, or 0800 169 0240 in Welsh, Monday to Friday from 10am to 3pm. If you are refused, you can ask for a mandatory reconsideration, and challenging a Universal Credit decision explains how that process works.

Claim the grant anyway, inside the time limit. DWP's notes to form SF100 say that if you are waiting for a decision on a qualifying benefit you can still claim, but you must still claim between the opening of the window and the baby turning 6 months old. They also warn that if you receive Universal Credit, a decision on the grant may wait until after your next Universal Credit payment. There is a protection in regulation 6(16) to (18) of the Social Security (Claims and Payments) Regulations 1987 if the grant is refused only because your benefit had not been awarded yet. It applies if you claimed the qualifying benefit no later than 10 working days after claiming the grant, and that benefit is later awarded. You then make a further claim for the grant within three months of the benefit decision, and that further claim is treated as made on the date of your original grant claim, or the first day your benefit was awarded for, whichever is later. In practice, if your Universal Credit claim is made before your grant claim, or no more than 10 working days after it, a refusal because Universal Credit had not been decided can be put right, as long as you make a further claim within three months of the Universal Credit decision. Reporting a change of circumstances covers adding the baby to your Universal Credit claim once they are born.

No on both counts. Gov.uk says you do not have to pay the grant back and it will not affect your other benefits, and the Universal Credit rules back that up. The grant is a social fund payment under Part 8 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992. Paragraph 16 of Schedule 10 to the Universal Credit Regulations 2013 disregards any social fund payment made within the past 12 months when your capital is worked out, so the £500 does not count towards the £6,000 point where savings start to reduce your award. It is not income either, because regulation 66 of the same Regulations lists the only kinds of unearned income that count, and social fund grants are not among them. That makes it different from the two things Universal Credit does take into account after a birth. Maternity Allowance counts as unearned income under regulation 66, and Statutory Maternity Pay counts as earnings under regulation 55, both of which the maternity allowance and Universal Credit calculator works through. The same 12-month capital disregard applies to Scotland's Pregnancy and Baby Payment under paragraph 21 of Schedule 10, as early years assistance.

In Scotland you cannot get a Sure Start Maternity Grant. You apply to Social Security Scotland for the Pregnancy and Baby Payment, part of the Best Start Grant, which is £796.65 for your first child and £398.35 for any later child. It has no first-child rule in the same form: a later child gets the lower amount instead of nothing, and some families, such as those who became responsible for an older child after they turned 1, or who fled domestic abuse, can get the higher amount for a later child. You can apply from the end of the 24th week of pregnancy until the baby is 6 months old, and Universal Credit is one of the qualifying benefits. If you are under 18 you do not need any benefit at all. You cannot get the Pregnancy and Baby Payment if you have already had a Sure Start Maternity Grant for the same baby. In Northern Ireland the grant is the same £500 with the same qualifying benefits and exceptions, but it is run by the Department for Communities. You use Northern Ireland's own SF100 and post it to DfC Sure Start Maternity Grants, Mail Handling Site A, Wolverhampton WV98 2JX. Nidirect says the date the form reaches the Department is the date it can pay from, and that if you have claimed Universal Credit you will not get a decision until your Universal Credit claim has been processed. Universal Credit in Northern Ireland covers the wider differences there.