Redundancy and Tax free childcare

[wintertime6]

I'm hoping someone will know the answer to this as I can't find it online.

My DH is going to be made redundant in a couple of weeks. He's applying for new jobs but of course who knows how long that will take. My 2 year old has been out of nursery since lockdown but we have arranged for him to go back 2 days a week starting in September.

We use the tax free childcare account. I need to reconfirm our details soon (before DH's redundancy takes effect) so I think I'm fine to reconfirm that everything is the same and use the account for the next 3 months until we have to reconfirm again? Is that right? If DH doesn't have a job in 3 months time then we'd declare it and wouldn't get the extra money from the govt if we lodged money into it from that point???

What I also want to know is can I top up the account with extra money now to make use of the extra 20% and then have that sitting in the account and use it over the next 6 or 9 months if DH still isn't working? Or if we declare in 3 months time that DH isn't working will they just take back their 20% from anything we've lodged before that date??

I hope that makes sense, just want to make the most of any savings we can as long as that's allowed.

You're right you can reconfirm whilst he's still officially employed and they won't take back their 20% top up from your account if you no longer are eligible. They do have a grace period where you can still use the account as normal when your job circumstances change although I can't remember what it is but Google TFC grace period. I'd reconfirm as late as you can and hope your DH has a new job the next time.

Sorry just checked the grace period and that's for the 30 hours funded portion of tax free childcare after they turn 3.

Thanks @Pepperwand I've been googling a bit more and it seems to say that we can still get the tax free childcare if one parent is claiming contributions based ESA, which DH is planning to do once his redundancy kicks in. Although I can't actually see this on the government website.

Think that we will top up the account before he actually gets made redundant, we're not going to lose anything as I can always withdraw what we put in if we need to.