Disclaimer

This is not legal advice

Nothing on this site is legal advice, and using it does not create any professional relationship. It gives general information about how special guardianship allowances are supposed to be decided. It cannot tell you what will happen in your case.

Every figure is an estimate

Financial support for special guardians is discretionary. There is no fixed amount you can require your council to pay. What the calculator shows you is the figure the statutory guidance says your council should be starting from.

A council can lawfully pay less than the maximum after properly assessing your circumstances. What it should not do is start from the wrong figure, or apply a blanket rule without considering your case.

What I do not know about your council

Unless the result said otherwise, the calculator uses national minimum figures for your area. It does not know your council's own policy, its enhancement rates, or how it applies its means test. Those vary a great deal.

Where my data has gaps, I say so

I do not publish figures I have not verified against their original source, and I do not work missing figures out from percentages. A number that looks precise and is slightly wrong is worse than no number, because you might take it to your council.

Working out what you were underpaid in past years now covers England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. One year of Welsh rates is still missing, so a Welsh calculation leaves that year out and names it. I could get close by taking a later year’s figures and removing the increase, but close is not good enough for a claim you are going to put to your council.

The Welsh rates are here, with one caveat I would rather you heard from me: in Wales the rate for a child under 5 is higher than for a child aged 5 to 15. That is genuinely how they are published.

The Welsh Government’s own circular for an earlier year prints them that way, so the pattern is settled. This year’s figures come from a table reproducing that circular, because the letter for this year has not been published anywhere I can find.

Rates change

Allowance rates change on 1 April each year and benefit rates change a few days later. Check the date on any page before you rely on it. If my rates are out of date, a banner at the top of every page will tell you.

Please check anything that matters

If something here could affect a decision about money or about your child, check it with an adviser before you act on it.