Written evidence submitted by the Gingerbread (CPS0019)

About Gingerbread:

Gingerbread is the leading charity working with single-parent families. Our mission is to champion and enable single-parent families to live secure, happy, and fulfilling lives. Since 1918, we’ve been supporting and campaigning with single parents to help them meet their family’s needs and achieve their goals. We want to create a world in which diverse families can thrive. We won’t stop working until we achieve this vision. Whatever success means for a single parent – a healthy family, a flexible job, stable finances, or a chance to study – we work with them to make it happen.

Summary:

The Child Poverty Strategy is an important step toward addressing the high rate of child poverty in the UK. It includes several welcome measures, such as abolishing the two-child limit on Universal Credit payments and steps to strengthen employment rights. With 43% of children in single-parent families living in poverty across the country, Gingerbread is encouraged to see both the recognition of the higher risk of poverty these households face and the commitment to supporting them within the Strategy.

Having called for the links between child maintenance, social security, and child poverty to be clearly acknowledged within the Strategy as part of our #FixtheCMS and #SupportnotPunish campaigns, we particularly welcome the inclusion of these areas as drivers of poverty.

However, there is more work to be done to meaningfully reduce child poverty across the country, and there are several areas where the Strategy has missed opportunities to increase its impact for low-income families. In particular, we are disappointed by the retention of the benefit cap, which will disproportionately affect single-parent families who make up nearly 70% of capped households. While other social security changes are welcome, they do not go far enough to restore support to pre-2010 levels.

The Strategy also lacks sufficient action on disability benefits and support for families subject to the No Recourse to Public Funds condition. Employment and childcare reforms are welcome but do not go far enough to address structural barriers to work, including limited access to flexible employment and inadequate Jobcentre and childcare support. Further action to address these gaps is needed to strengthen the Strategy.

In addition, clear and ambitious targets should be introduced. Targets should aim to halve child poverty within 10 years and eliminate it within 20 years, and progress should be monitored independently and reported annually to Parliament. As the baseline report is not expected until summer 2026, interim indicators should be identified to provide a sense of whether the Strategy is on track.

Submission:

Strengthening outcomes

• Is the Child Poverty Strategy sufficiently ambitious?
• Are the drivers and outcomes that the Government has to set out in the Strategy the right ones?

The Strategy contains several welcome measures, including the removal of the two-child limit and an increase to the Universal Credit standard allowance. Gingerbread welcomes the Strategy’s recognition of the high risk of poverty among children in single-parent families, with 43% currently living in poverty in the UK. The drivers identified, particularly social security and child maintenance, employment, and childcare, align with Gingerbread’s research, and the commitment to “supporting single parents to ensure children do not lose out when families separate” is especially welcome.

However, the Strategy is not sufficiently ambitious. While social security has significant potential to reduce child poverty, key opportunities for reform have been missed. For example, the retention of the benefit cap will continue to disproportionately affect single-parent families, particularly those with younger children who face significant barriers to work. Further, there is limited attention to disability benefits or addressing poverty amongst families in the No-Recourse to Public Funds category.

Reforms to the Child Maintenance Service (CMS), including the planned consolidation into a single service type and a forthcoming consultation on maintenance calculations, are positive in principle. However, with legislative changes not expected until 2027/28, many parents remain exposed to non-compliance and financial insecurity. Additionally, the Strategy does not contain any concrete measures to strengthen enforcement of arrears in the interim.

Finally, the Strategy lacks clear targets for reducing child poverty overall. By the government’s own projections, 4.3 million children will still be living in poverty by the end of this Parliament.[1] Given the profound and lasting harm poverty causes, the current approach does not yet match the scale of ambition required. The introduction of legally binding, independently evaluated targets would ensure accountability for delivery.

• Are there any policies and initiatives that could strengthen the outcomes in:

(i) boosting families’ incomes;

(ii) saving families’ money;

(iii) securing families’ finances; and

(iv) strengthening local support,

That were not included in the Child Support Strategy?

Boosting families’ incomes

The Benefit Cap

The removal of the two-child limit on social security payments from April 2026 is a particularly welcome commitment within the Strategy and one that will be transformative for many children and families living in poverty in the UK. However, the government has missed an opportunity to maximise the impact of this reform by retaining the benefit cap, which limits the total amount a household can receive in social security.

Keeping the cap in place means that some households will see no gain from the removal of the two-child limit because they are already subject to the cap, while some others will become newly capped and therefore experience only a partial gain. Single-parent families, especially those with young children, will be particularly vulnerable to these adverse effects. They make up nearly 70% of capped households, and 59% of these have a youngest child under five.[2]

The government has argued that the benefit cap “incentivises people to move into employment”.[3] However, evidence shows that shows that only a small proportion of capped households move into work because of the cap.[4] Single parents, in particular, face significant barriers to employment, including limited access to flexible or part-time jobs and affordable childcare. With 43% of children in single-parent families living in poverty in the UK,[5] maintaining the cap risks pushing many deeper into hardship.

Analysis by the Women’s Budget Group[6] shows that single parent households account for 70% of those who would have experienced a larger increase in annual income if both the two-child limit and the benefit cap had been abolished. On average, single-mother households are projected to see their annual income rise by £735 in 2029/30 as a result of lifting the two-child limit alone. Had the benefit cap also been removed, this increase would have reached £1,800, more than double the projected gain and equivalent to a 9% rise in disposable income. Single-father households would also have benefited more if both policies had been abolished, though to a lesser extent, reflecting their generally higher average earnings.

Recommendation: The government must abolish the benefit cap.

Universal Credit

While the Strategy includes a welcome increase to the basic rate of Universal Credit from April 2026 that will benefit many families, it is important to recognise that successive cuts to social security means that the value of the standard allowance has been significantly eroded over time. Child Poverty Action Group estimates that around £50 billion has been cut from the annual social security budget since 2010.[7] Over the same period, the cost of living has risen sharply. Therefore, while the increase to the basic rate is a positive step, it does not go far enough to restore support to pre-2010 levels. Moreover, changes to disability benefits, including cuts to the health element of Universal Credit, will mean that some families with a disabled parent will receive less support.

The Strategy also fails to address wider systemic issues that continue to reduce families’ incomes, including increasingly strict Universal Credit conditionality and sanctions. In 2023, work requirements for lead carers with a youngest child aged three were increased from 16 to 30 hours per week. Yet single parents face significant barriers to employment, notably the shortage of affordable childcare and the limited availability of flexible, part-time work. For many, particularly those without another adult to share caring responsibilities, these requirements are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to meet. This risks exposing them to sanctions and pushing them further into poverty.

Recommendation: The government should reverse the Universal Credit conditionality rules put in place by the last government in 2023, that requires lead carers of children aged 3 to 12 to be available for work for up to 30 hours per week.

Recommendation: The government should review the impact and effectiveness of the current Universal Credit conditionality regime and the benefits of abolishing Universal Credit sanctions entirely, ensuring that, if sanctions are to continue, they are only used in the most exceptional circumstances with forewarning and discussion with the claimant.

Recommendation: The government should make sure there is clear information available to claimants on how to challenge a sanction and signposting to financial and mental health support.

Employment

There are welcome measures in the Strategy to strengthen employment rights, including increases to the minimum wage and reforms through the Make Work Pay plan and Employment Rights Bill. However, further action is needed to embed flexibility in the labour market. It is Gingerbread’s view that all roles should be advertised as flexible by default, unless there is a clear business reason not to. There should also be wider efforts to shift workplace culture around part-time work. Research suggests over 100,000 single parents could move into quality part-time roles but are currently unemployed or stuck in lower-paid positions,[8] underlining the need for employer incentives and support to create better-quality flexible jobs.

The Strategy also contains limited targeted action to support in-work progression and skills development. Gingerbread’s Single Parent Employment Challenge report found that consistent, tailored and personalised support is key to helping single parents enter and sustain employment. Yet many report that Jobcentre Plus does not adequately take their circumstances into account, with too few feeling advisers fully understand the barriers they face. [9]

The Strategy recognises employment rates among single parents have risen since 2010/11, with 65% now in work, and being in work is not enough to lift families out of poverty. As such, measures to increase employment must be matched by strong investment in social security.

Recommendation: The government should introduce specialist single parent work coaches.

Recommendation: The government should introduce a duty on employers to advertise all roles as flexible, unless there is a clear business reason not to.

Childcare

It is encouraging that the Strategy recognises access to affordable childcare as an essential part of tackling child poverty. Gingerbread welcomes the extension of Universal Credit childcare support to families with three or more children and support with upfront childcare costs to parents returning to work from parental leave. We also welcome the creation additional places through school-based nurseries and the commitment to a childcare review. However, further reform is needed to ensure support is both adequate and accessible.

Single parents frequently tell Gingerbread that they want to train or re-train to access employment that will provide a better balance of work and caring responsibilities. Yet the 30 hours of government-funded childcare remains available only to eligible working parents, leaving a significant barrier in place for those seeking to improve their skills.

Further, although the Flexible Support Fund has been extended to parents returning from parental leave, help with upfront childcare costs is still unavailable for those who need to change their childcare arrangements, for example, when informal care from a family member ends. Gingerbread’s Single Parent Employment Challenge report found that almost all single parents who needed childcare to work relied on informal, unpaid arrangements. These arrangements were often precarious and relied on continued personal relationships and the goodwill of others. For instance, they were involving new partners, relatives and neighbours, or the goodwill of employers in allowing a child to accompany their parent to work.[10]

The Strategy also overlooks ongoing problems with how the Childcare Element of Universal Credit operates in practice. The reimbursement parents receive is not ringfenced for childcare and is means-tested, so the amount can fluctuate with changes in earnings. This leaves some parents unclear on how much help they will get month to month, particularly where they have an income that changes month to month. Moreover, as the Childcare Element is included in a claimant’s overall Universal Credit award, it is subject to the 55% Universal Credit taper, which means that parents don’t receive reimbursement for the full amount of childcare costs they’ve paid. This is particularly concerning given that support is already capped at 85% of eligible costs, further reducing the assistance available to families.

Recommendation: The government should extend the 30 hours of funded childcare offer to parents in education and training.

Recommendation: The government should extend the support through the Flexible Support Fund for upfront childcare costs to parents changing their childcare arrangements.

Recommendation: The government should ensure that the childcare element of Universal Credit is ringfenced and not subject to the UC taper. 

CMS

We welcome the Strategy’s recognition of the vital role child maintenance plays in reducing poverty within single-parent families. Evidence shows that receiving child maintenance reduces the child poverty rate by 25%.[11] The planned consolidation of the CMS into a single service-type, similar to Collect and Pay, has the potential to strengthen protections for victim-survivors of domestic abuse and improve compliance monitoring. Government estimates suggest that consolidation alone could lift 20,000 children out of poverty.

However, Gingerbread understands that the announced reforms will require legislative change, with an introduction expected in 2027/28. In the meantime, parents using Direct Pay, particularly those who have experienced domestic abuse, remain exposed to risk and non-compliance. Although the Child Support Collection (Domestic Abuse) Act received Royal Assent in 2023 and would allow victim-survivors entering the CMS to move directly onto Collect and Pay, the government does not intend to commence the implementation of this legislation. This represents a missed opportunity to provide immediate protection.

More broadly, the consolidation must be accompanied by a significant strengthening of enforcement against arrears. Without this, improvements in compliance monitoring will have limited impact. Arrears under the CMS have risen year on year, and the National Audit Office (NAO) forecasts they could reach £1 billion by March 2031, should they continue to grow at the current rate of more than £1 million a week.[12] It is disappointing that the Strategy contains no concrete measures to address this growing problem.

Recommendation: The government should introduce, as a matter of urgency, the requisite legislation that would enable parents who have experienced domestic abuse from the other partner to move directly into a Collect and Pay arrangement.

Recommendation: The government must strengthen and expedite enforcement processes to ensure timely, robust action is taken to secure child maintenance payments and protect victim-survivors from ongoing financial abuse. This should include bringing forward the requisite secondary legislation to introduce administrative liability orders.

Saving families’ money

Local Housing Allowance

While the Strategy states that the government “will continue to review the levels of support” in the private rented sector, it makes no clear commitment to uprating Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates. The current rates are insufficient and have not kept up with rising rents, with research finding that fewer than three in every 100 privately rented properties (2.5%) listed in England are affordable for people claiming LHA.[13] This pushes children into homelessness or insecure housing. Uprating LHA, so that it more accurately reflects actual housing costs and keeps pace with market rents, would provide more effective protection against poverty and housing instability.

Recommendation: The government should uprate LHA rates to the 30th percentile of local rent costs and maintain the link permanently.

• What will the distributional impacts of the Strategy be, including across the regions and nations of the UK and among different groups of children and families with protected characteristics?
• What impact might the Strategy have on children who experience other specific barriers, for example, children with experience of the care system; children at risk of criminal exploitation; and children at risk of entering the criminal justice system?

The Strategy is expected to deliver positive impacts for many low-income families across the UK, including single-parent families who face a high risk of poverty. The abolition of the two-child limit is especially significant and will increase incomes for many larger families. However, the distributional impacts are likely to vary considerably between regions, nations, and different groups of children and families, particularly where protected characteristics intersect.

Because most single parents are women, employment and childcare reforms will have gendered effects. While strengthened employment rights and increases to the National Minimum Wage (NMW) are welcome, the Strategy does not go far enough to address persistent barriers to work, including limited access to flexible employment, childcare challenges and inadequate Jobcentre support, which are particularly acute for single-parent families.

The retention of the benefit cap, alongside a lack of reform to Universal Credit conditionality requirements for lead carers, disproportionately affects single parents, especially single mothers. As stated above, on average, single-mother households would have seen their annual income rise by £1,800 in 2029/30 if the benefit cap had been removed alongside the two-child limit. Single-parent families account for 70% of those who would have experienced a larger annual income increase had both policies been abolished together.[14] As a result, while some families will benefit substantially, others will see more limited gains.

Structural labour market inequalities and discrimination further compound poverty risks for children in Black and ethnic minority single-parent families. These families are over-represented in the private rented sector and are more likely to spend a higher proportion of their income on rent.[15] The failure to uprate LHA will therefore disproportionately affect them, particularly in areas with high private rents, reinforcing both regional and ethnic inequalities.

Although the Strategy recognises the strong link between disability and child poverty, it does not sufficiently address the inadequacy of social security support for families with a disabled child or parent. Research by Action for Children shows that only 12% of parents receiving incapacity benefits are able to keep up with all bills and credit commitments without difficulty.[16] In addition, changes to disability benefits, including cuts to the health element of Universal Credit, will reduce support for some families with a disabled parent, undermining efforts to tackle child poverty among disabled households.

The Strategy also does not go far enough to address poverty among migrant families. Evidence suggests that the No Recourse to Public Funds condition, which acts as a near-blanket ban on access to the social security system, can cause significant hardship for affected families.[17] Without stronger intervention, poverty among these families is likely to persist.

Monitoring and evaluating progress

• Should the Child Poverty Strategy include measurable targets and interim targets? If so, what should they be?

Yes. The Child Poverty Strategy should include legally binding, independently evaluated targets to halve child poverty within 10 years and eradicate it within 20 years. This would ensure accountability for delivery. While the government has raised concerns that targets could narrow policy focus to those just below the poverty line, headline metrics are widely used across other government priorities, including the opportunity mission, to drive accountability and sustained attention. The Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, published alongside the Strategy, includes welcome commitments to establishing a baseline set of measures from 2026 and reporting against this in future years. This provides a strong foundation for legally binding targets.

Recommendation: The government should set a target to halve child poverty within 10 years and eradicate child poverty within 20 years.

• What is your view of the Government's proposed 'Monitoring and Evaluation Framework' for the Child Poverty Strategy? How could it be improved?

As stated above, the Monitoring and Evaluation Framework is a welcome accompaniment to the Strategy. Its commitment to establishing a baseline set of measures from 2026, including both relative poverty and a new measure of deep poverty, will provide a greater understanding of the scale and severity of poverty in the UK. However, the framework is an analytical tool and does not in itself guarantee accountability or delivery. As such, the government should commit to reporting to Parliament every year against clear targets and milestones. Setting up an independent body to monitor progress, ideally backed by legislation, would help to secure accountability for reducing child poverty. Further, as the government’s baseline report is not expected until summer 2026, interim indicators should be identified to provide a sense of whether the Strategy is on track. Alongside this, clear mechanisms to gather and respond to feedback from families experiencing poverty, and organisations supporting them, should be developed.

• What should be included in the Government's baseline report this summer?

The government’s baseline report should provide clear data on levels of child poverty across different groups, including children in single-parent families. It should also present analysis across protected characteristics, household type and geography to support an understanding of where disadvantage is most concentrated and how it may be compounded.

Building on the Strategy and Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, the baseline report should clarify what further evidence and indicators will inform ongoing monitoring and evaluation. The starting position for each of these indicators and the timeframe for improvement should be included. Where possible, the report should also link specific actions within the Strategy to intended outcomes, so that the success or limitations of measures can be assessed. Finally, transparency about data limitations, and plans to address gaps in data collection, will also be important to ensure robust and credible assessment over time.

• How should the Government support the monitoring and evaluation of actions to reduce child poverty at the local level, and across different protected characteristics? And what data is either available or necessary to achieve this?
• What data is available and necessary to monitor child poverty and the impact of interventions, across protected characteristics, at the local level?

To support effective monitoring and evaluation at local level, the government must ensure that there is adequate resourcing, clear accountability and improved data collection. As the Strategy acknowledges, local authorities have faced sustained funding pressures, which has weakened preventative services and affected low-income families. While the funding commitments in the Strategy are welcome, it is likely that there will still be gaps in local authority budgets, and placing additional requirements on local authorities to deliver the government’s ambitions without adequate resourcing would risk undermining delivery.

Further, research highlights gaps in data, especially for groups at higher risk of poverty, including Black and minority ethnic families, and migrant and refugee households. This is a particular issue at the local level where small sample sizes can limit meaningful monitoring and analysis.[18] In many cases, local authority data on poverty cannot be disaggregated by more than one characteristic at a time, which restricts intersectional analysis.[19] Strengthening local data quality and ensuring it can be disaggregated across protected characteristics, including through increasing survey response rates and sample sizes, will be essential to understanding who benefits from the Strategy.

• What will be necessary to secure the longevity of the Child Poverty Strategy?

To secure the longevity of the Child Poverty Strategy, targets, strong leadership, strong accountability and ongoing engagement with lived experience experts will be essential. As mentioned above, legally binding, independently evaluated targets to halve child poverty within 10 years and eradicate it within 20 years should be introduced to drive accountability and sustained attention. The government’s commitment to annual reporting on the progress it is making to deliver the Strategy is welcome. However, further clarity on how robust this reporting will be is needed. A commitment to report on the success of the actions the government is taking, measured against targets, alongside the establishment of an independent scrutiny body to monitor progress and report to Parliament, would be particularly welcome.

Effective leadership will also be necessary to ensure the Strategy remains on track. Concerns have been raised surrounding the closure of the Child Poverty Unit within the Cabinet Office in favour of a smaller team established within the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to oversee delivery. Due to the cross-cutting nature of child poverty and its contributing factors, the actions required to address it span government departments. Therefore, a coordinated response from the centre of government, with cross-departmental ministerial oversight is necessary to avoid a policy gap and ensure child poverty is reduced.

Longevity will further depend on close partnership with the devolved nations, including regular dialogue to ensure alignment on definitions, measurement, data and targets. Work is already being done across the devolved nations on child poverty, as the Strategy acknowledges. Therefore, delivery must also work in conjunction with, and be informed by, any existing child poverty strategies in these nations. It is welcome that the Strategy uses household income below 60 per cent of the median (after housing costs) as the headline measure for progress as this aligns with the measures used in the Scottish and Welsh strategies and will enable consistency across the UK.

Finally, sustained engagement with families experiencing poverty will enable the government to gather timely insights on the real-life impact that actions are having on families, which can help to ensure that they are effective.

March 2026