Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan: Progress Report 2025-26

Introduction

This is the final annual progress report against ‘Best Start, Bright Futures’, the Scottish Government’s Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan for the period 2022-26.

Set against continued and unprecedented challenges to the public finances and unrelenting cost of living pressures on household budgets, this report details the steps taken by the Scottish Government in 2025-26 to enhance support for families and drive continued progress in eradicating child poverty.

Over this period, we continued to prioritise action on child poverty, investing over £3.1 billion in support targeted at low income households, with spend benefiting children rising to almost £1.5 billion. This has enabled ongoing investment in key measures including our Scottish Child Payment, estimated to keep 50,000 children out of relative poverty this year, making Free School Meals available to over 360,000 pupils, saving families who take them every day £450 a year, and mitigating the UK Government’s Benefit Cap, with potential to support over 9,000 children.

Our investment has also allowed us to go further, with our Bright Start Breakfasts Fund creating almost 9,000 breakfast club spaces, and increased investment in our Affordable Housing Supply Programme supporting more than an estimated 2,000 children into affordable housing between April and December 2025.

This year also saw publication of the UK Government’s delayed Child Poverty Strategy. Following the UK Government’s announcement that it would end the two-child limit from April 2026, we reallocated funding previously committed to our Two Child Limit Payment to further strengthen action on child poverty. The majority of this funding was split between charities and government programmes that provide emergency financial support – providing immediate relief to families over the winter period.

Informed by consultation and engagement across the year, in March 2026 we published ‘Bringing Hope, Building Futures’ our Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan for 2026-31. The Plan commits concrete action to drive continued progress. This includes investing £40 million in 2026-27 to deliver new support with transport and skills for families, increasing our Scottish Child Payment to £40 for families with a child under 1 during 2027-28, and investing to deliver a national breakfast club offer for primary school aged children with provision in all primary and special schools by August 2027.

Building on the action taken over the life of ‘Best Start, Bright Futures’, measures within the new Delivery Plan are estimated to keep 100,000 children out of relative poverty this year.

We will publish the first annual progress report against delivery of ‘Bringing Hope, Building Futures’ by the end of June 2027. This will provide an update on the Scottish Government’s plans to eradicate child poverty.

This report provides an update on the implementation of ‘Best Start, Bright Futures’ and the latest progress on child poverty.

The first section provides an overview of key actions delivered over the four years of ‘Best Start, Bright Futures’.

Covering the period 2022-26, this includes a summary of steps taken over the life of the Delivery Plan as well as selected milestones achieved in each year. Further detail on action and progress delivered in each year can be found in respective annual progress reports.

The second section provides an update on the implementation of actions in ‘Best Start, Bright Futures’ and priorities identified as part of last year’s annual progress report.

These updates are organised by thematic area, with a focus on the impact of actions taken over the reporting period. Updates on actions within the Plan which have not been incorporated within this section can be found within table 4.2 in the final section of this report.

The third section details progress toward the child poverty targets using the latest data available for 2024-25 and provides an update in relation to the drivers of poverty reduction using the latest available evidence.

This section reflects changes to poverty statistics published in March 2026, which includes a link to administrative records for Department for Work and Pensions benefits from 2021-22 onward. A revised time-series from 2018-19 onward will be published in summer this year and will help to inform a clearer understanding of changes in poverty rates over the life of the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017.

The final section of this report provides additional updates on action and spend.

This includes an at a glance summary of progress and updates on actions not covered in the second section of this report. Tables and further information on investments are also provided in relation to the Tackling Child Poverty Fund, reinvestment of Two Child Limit Payment funding, and the latest estimates of spend targeted toward low income households and children.

This section also sets out how this report meets the requirements set out in the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017, including the Scottish Government’s response to the comments and recommendations made by the Poverty and Inequality Commission.

Alongside this report, we have published the latest data and trends in relation to the Child Poverty Measurement Framework in Annex A. This is summarised in the third section of this report.