What to do if HMRC can't find a Child Trust Fund

[franke]

Long story short. DD was born just after this scheme started in 2002. DH and I can't remember anything about it, have no paperwork from the time. We left the UK in 2004 to live abroad. Dd is a British citizen if that's relevant.

Wrote to HMRC last year to ask them to find it. Received a timely reply asking on for more info which we sent last June. Received no subsequent reply from HMRC despite following up. Everything done by post because we can't get access online and dd doesn't have a NI number.

There's no phone number or email to follow this up with a human being. What can we do?

@EdHelpPls thanks, I'll keep that in mind if I don't get any further with the HMRC.

I was thinking to check my recollection and then ask which month you were born. Turns out I'm correct that children born from 1st September 2002 got this.

Savings: does your child have a forgotten £1,000 to claim? | Savings | The Guardian

But this article reminds me of something I'd totally forgotten, that could well be relevant to your situation. They were actually only invented in 2005, but backdated to the above date. It was definitely the case that if you didn't act on your voucher and set one up within a certain time, it would be set up on your child's behalf.

So, this explains why you don't remember hearing about it, as you'd already left, and raises the possibility that as you were no longer in the UK your daughter might just have missed out - who knows what happened.

Good luck, hopefully getting her NI number will allow you to get to the bottom of it.

@Pythonesque thanks for this, another piece of the puzzle which may explain why we can't remember anything and don't have any paperwork. I wonder if the fact we'd already left ruled us out of the scheme altogether. I can't wait to find out now.

Hi OP

Apologies I know this is an old thread

Any updates on your lost child trust fund @franke

One of my twins has just been told by hmrc they have no record of his Ctf. ( the other twin has his). So I’m interested to know what happened with your child’s.

If anyone else can advice what to do that would be helpful too.
For reference
He is British and born in England, we have never left the country.
His ctf was put into The Share Centre by hmrc
The Share Centre then stopped doing CTF and according to their website transferred all ctfs to OneFamily
None of these including hmrc have a record of his ctf.

Next steps anyone?

@StandingSideBySide We didn't get anywhere I'm afraid. It's very opaque and impossible to communicate directly. We've drawn a blank. I suspect the fact that we left the country before any trust funds were actually established is the key point. Can't find any terms and conditions that would shed light on our eligibility.

But thanks for bringing this up again - there are some very helpful replies on this thread that I'll try to get dd to follow up at some point. She's not even in Europe atm so it may take some time. She was told last year that there was no NI number for her, but given some of the posts here, that may not be true. She needs to speak to an actual person.

The good news is she can vote in the UK even though she only lived there until she was 15 months old

We found my sons.
I phoned around and found hmrc had misspelt my sons very normal first name.
So despite putting in his national insurance number and all other details on the hmrc website they said there was no ctf for him. However once I noticed the incorrect spelling they found it.
Hope you find yours.
Perhaps suggest alternate spellings for the name

Good luck