How the rates work, and when they change
Written and reviewed by Patricia Hughes · Last updated · last reviewed · rates for 2026/27
Two different calendars
Your allowance rates and your benefit rates change on different days, and for a few days every April the site you are reading and the letter in your hand can disagree.
Important
There are three dates in April, not two. Councils normally raise allowance rates on 1 April. The government states those same rates for a tax year running 6 April to 5 April.
Benefit rates change in the first full week of April, around the 6th. Between the 1st and the 6th, the new allowance rates coexist with last year's benefit rates, and a council following the tax year may still be paying last year's allowance.
Those gaps are a real source of confusion, including inside councils. My calculator treats allowances and benefits as two independent lookups with their own effective dates, so a calculation dated 3 April uses the new allowance rates and the old benefit rates. That is correct, and it is not what you get if you assume one financial year covers both.
I follow the council convention of 1 April, because that is what decides what a carer is actually paid. If you are working out what you were owed over past years, the site tells you in pounds how much of the total depends on that choice. It is a few pounds per April, not a few hundred.
The current rates
| Age of child | London | South East | Rest of England |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0–2 | £205 | £195 | £176 |
| 3–4 | £208 | £203 | £182 |
| 5–10 | £233 | £223 | £201 |
| 11–15 | £266 | £255 | £227 |
| 16–17 | £309 | £298 | £267 |
| Age of child | Weekly rate |
|---|---|
| 0–4 | £177.68 |
| 5–15 | £206.71 |
| 16–17 | £283.35 |
| Age of child | Weekly rate |
|---|---|
| 0–4 | £160 |
| 5–10 | £179 |
| 11–15 | £200 |
| 16–17 | £235 |
The full tables, including previous years, are on the rates page.
Why I do not publish figures I have not verified
I hold rate data as versioned files with an effective date, and the build fails if a figure looks wrong, if rates fall as age rises, if a value sits outside a sane range, or if a year-on-year change is implausible.
Where a figure has not been confirmed against its original source, I do not publish it. That is why one year of Welsh rates is missing: working a historic rate backwards from an uplift percentage would produce a number that looks precise and could be a few pounds out, and a few pounds out across two years of backdating is exactly the kind of error that gets a carer's complaint dismissed.
The Welsh rates are an exception worth explaining, because they look wrong. In Wales a child under five attracts a higher rate than a child aged five to fifteen, which is the reverse of every other table I hold.
I have now seen the Welsh Government's own circular, which prints them that way, so this is settled rather than inferred. I publish them as published and explain them on screen, rather than quietly correcting a government figure to look more sensible.
Welsh Government, National Minimum Allowances for foster carers 2024 to 2025, circular of 26 February 2024 (checked 2026-09-03)What rises are expected
Committed uplifts to the fostering national minimum allowance are the higher of 2.5% or CPI for 2027/28 and 2028/29. I do not publish projections as though they were rates.
What you can check, and what you have to ask for
The national minimum for your child's age is published every year, it is on this page with its source, and it does not change from one council to the next.
The figure your council actually started from is nowhere. It is not published, and it is the first thing to ask for, because every argument after it rests on it.
Work out what your council should be paying you It takes under a minute, and nothing you type leaves your browser.
Common questions
Why do you show fostering rates on a special guardianship site?
Because the statutory guidance treats the core fostering allowance as the starting point for a special guardianship allowance. It is the benchmark your council should be working from.
My council pays more than these figures. Is that allowed?
Yes. These are minimums for fostering allowances. Nothing stops a council paying more, and some do.
This is an estimate, not legal advice. Financial support for special guardians is discretionary, and there is no fixed amount you can require your council to pay. It shows you the figure your council should be starting from, and what the rules and the published decisions say about how it has to decide.
Your council can lawfully pay less than the maximum after properly assessing your circumstances. If something here matters to your case, talk to one of the advice lines below before you rely on it.
Where these figures and rules come from
- Welsh Government, National Minimum Allowances for foster carers 2024 to 2025, circular of 26 February 2024 (checked 2026-09-03)Sets the Welsh national minimum allowances from 1 April 2024 at 218 pounds for ages 0 to 4, 199 pounds for 5 to 15 and 248 pounds for 16 and over, a rise of 3 per cent.
- DfE Special Guardianship Guidance (Jan 2017), para 65 (checked 2026-08-29)
- Child Benefit and Guardian's Allowance Up-rating Order 2026 (checked 2026-09-03)
- Scottish Recommended Allowance for foster and kinship carers, Scottish Government, page updated 11 May 2026 (checked 2026-08-31)A national minimum for foster and kinship carers alike. Councils may pay more.
Related guides
Who can help
These organisations give free, independent advice on kinship care and special guardianship. They are not part of your council.
- Kinship: advice and peer support for kinship carers. kinship.org.uk
- Family Rights Group: free advice line for families dealing with children's services. frg.org.uk
- Citizens Advice: benefits, debt and general advice. citizensadvice.org.uk
- Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (England), if you have complained to your council and are not satisfied. lgo.org.uk