Total Welfare 2026-27
£0
Official 2026 / 27 Rates - Cached Snapshot
Build a household package, swap between official housing benchmarks and manual support, then compare the result against both paid work and the gross salary a worker would need to net the same cash after Income Tax and National Insurance.
The change taking effect on 6 April 2026 is the removal of the two-child limit in Universal Credit. The household benefit cap itself stays in place, so some families can be entitled to more on paper without seeing all of it in cash. This page leans into the politics, but keeps the maths and source wording straight.
Waiting for snapshot data.
Simplified bedroom logic is used to keep the page fast and easy to scan.
The cap is shown as a visible cash ceiling, not as a claim exemption checker.
Universal Credit households with a third or subsequent child born on or after 6 April 2017.
Total children living in households affected by the policy before it was removed.
Households affected by the limit that were already working, undercutting the lazy idea that this was only a worklessness story.
Households hit by both the old two-child rule and the still-live household benefit cap.
Extra annual UC child support restored for every additional child beyond the old limit.
Children the government press release said the legislation would put on a pathway out of poverty in the final year of this Parliament.
Monthly family cap outside London. The two-child limit moved today. This wider ceiling did not.
Weekly Child Benefit for the eldest child, plus a lower weekly rate for every additional child.
Weekly full new State Pension after the April 2026 uprating.
Monthly earnings ignored before UC starts tapering away for eligible households that also get housing support.
Snapshot timestamp: -
The out-of-work package includes standard UC, child elements, housing support and Child Benefit. It does not include UC childcare support because that support is tied to being in paid work.
The in-work comparison estimates monthly take-home pay from annual gross pay, then applies the current 55% UC taper and work allowances from GOV.UK. It does not try to model every assessment-period quirk, surplus earnings rule, pension contribution edge case or cap exemption.
Official housing mode uses cached Local Housing Allowance tables from the snapshot and a simplified bedroom rule: single without children uses the shared rate, childless couples use one bedroom, one or two children use two bedrooms, three or four children use three bedrooms, and five or more use four bedrooms.
The benefit cap block is intentionally shown as a visibility warning. It is not a full exemption checker and it does not attempt to test every earnings, disability or childcare exemption route.