Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many applicants have successfully applied to the Court of Protection to access their Child’s Trust Fund savings in the past three years.

According to management information provided by the Court of Protection for the period 2020 to date it has received and dealt with 70 successful applications where a Child Trust Fund is the sole asset. This does not include those cases where a Child Trust Fund may be one of several assets owned by the young person lacking capacity.

The online process to streamline and speed up processing times for property and affairs applications was made available to all court users in February. We continue to review and revise the process and the court will continue to identify areas to simplify and remove duplication on court forms, including uploading to the online process many of the forms required for a property and affairs applications.

It is for the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to consider the potential merits of using their Appointee scheme to cover Child Trust Fund accounts for disabled young people that lack mental capacity.