The 'lost' Child Trust Funds
Money Box
BBC
4.2 • 825 Ratings
🗓️ 5 September 2020
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From this month, young people turning 18 can access money given them by the Government in a Child Trust Fund. All children born from September 2002 were given vouchers to invest, the idea being to provide children with some savings at the age of 18, to help with the costs of university or living alone for the first time. Initially £250 was put into the account and another £250 was added when he or she reached the age of seven. For lower-income families, the payment was £500. But it's estimated about a third of eligible young people and their families have no idea these funds exist. So how do you go about finding them?
The financial regulator is currently consulting on limiting the amount it has to pay out when it fails to operate effectively. Campaigners are concerned it is weakening the current consumer redress.
More than two and a half million people have successfully claimed almost £8 billion from the UK government’s Self Employment Income Support Scheme. The scheme was designed to help self employed people whose businesses had suffered because of the economic crisis caused by Covid 19.. We hear from one man who found someone else had claimed his self-employment Government grant - twice!
And in our podcast we get a leaseholders response to the news that four of the UK's largest housebuilders are now facing court action after "troubling evidence" was uncovered by the Competition and Markets Authority over the way they sold leaseholds.
Presenter: Paul Lewis Reporter: Dan Whitworth Researcher Darin Graham Producer: Alex Lewis Editor: Emma Rippon
Transcript
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| 0:41.3 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, welcome to this Moneybox podcast, the first from our new series. |
| 0:45.3 | I'm Paul Lewis. The financial regulator is trying to limit the amount it has to pay out when it fails to operate effectively. |
| 0:52.3 | The environmental surveyor who found someone |
| 0:55.2 | else had claimed his self-employment government grant twice. And four major house builders |
| 1:01.0 | are being investigated for mis-selling leasehold houses to home buyers. They could face legal |
| 1:06.7 | action. But we start with 55,000 young people who turn 18 this month and may not know that they |
| 1:13.7 | have on average around £1,000 waiting for them in an investment account set up at birth by the |
| 1:20.0 | government. It's estimated up to a third of new 18-year-olds don't know the fund is there. And |
| 1:26.1 | unless they find it and claim it, they'll never get |
| 1:28.7 | the money that literally has their name on it. Charlie from Derby, who turned 18 on Tuesday, is one of |
| 1:34.4 | the very first to get hold of his cash. I saw an advert on social media, basically just saying |
| 1:40.7 | that if you're born from 1st of September 2002 to, I think it was 2011, |
| 1:47.0 | then you could have a child trust fund that was set up by the government and that when you |
| 1:51.6 | turn 18 you can then basically take that money. So I filled in my details and what turned out |
| 1:58.7 | that I did have one and now, well now I've turned 18 that I've now one, and now I've now turned 18, |
... |
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