A pilot scheme to target fraudulent and erroneous claims has been running for the last year, and has yielded good results, stopping payments of £17m, with only 15 investigators on the job, each producing more than a million pounds in stopped claims.

So far, 2,600 people have been removed from the system after they had left the UK but continued to claim child benefit and failed to notify HMRC.

The pilot was carried out by HMRC, the Public Sector Fraud Authority and the Home Office, and matched a random sample of 200,000 child benefit records with international travel data. 

Now the programme is going to be ramped up with 200 additional staff hired for a new specialist team to target people living abroad and abusing the system, with the aim of stopping £350m in fraudulent payments.

‘Child benefit will be stripped from tens of thousands of people who have moved abroad in a major clampdown expected to save £350m over the next five years,’ the Cabinet Office confirmed.

If a claimant is outside the UK for more than eight weeks, child benefit payments may stop unless there are exceptional circumstances. Claimants must inform HMRC if they are outside the UK for this length of time or longer. 

Alongside tougher checks, there will also be a ‘renewed drive will raise awareness of the rules, recognising that some errors are genuine mistakes’.

Every case is reviewed by a human investigator and HMRC will reach out directly to families as part of any investigation to resolve matters swiftly.

Cabinet Office minister Georgia Gould said: ‘This government is putting a stop to people claiming benefits when they aren’t eligible to do so.

‘From September, we’ll have ten times as many investigators saving hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayer’s money.

‘If you’re claiming benefits you’re not entitled to, your time is up.’

The total child benefit bill was £13.3bn in 2024-25, and it was paid to over 6.9m families, supporting 11.9m children. The average annual payout is £1,070 per child, and is based on a weekly amount. This is more or less a universal benefit, except for those earning above £80,000 who are not entitled to any payment, hence the high income child benefit charge (HICBC), which kicks in from £60,000 on a tapered basis.

It is one of the most widely accessed forms of benefit in the UK and is administered by HMRC.

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