Section 4 of the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 inserts section 16LC into the Children Act 2004. It lets the government specify a consistent identifier for children, so that records held by different agencies about the same child can be matched. Which number it will be, and which organisations must use it, will be set in regulations. When we checked legislation.gov.uk on 20 October 2026, this part of section 4 was not in force, and no identifier had been chosen.
You will often see it called a "single unique identifier". It comes up because reviews of serious cases have repeatedly found that agencies held pieces of information about the same child without connecting them.
For schools, there is nothing to do yet. Schools already hold a unique pupil number (UPN) for each pupil, and health services use the NHS number, but neither is the consistent identifier in the Act unless regulations say so.
The other part of section 4, the information sharing duty in new section 16LA, is a separate measure and has been in force since 30 September 2026.