v1.3.0

Requires at least: 5.8
Requires PHP: 7.4

Changed

• Every result now says it's before rent and council tax. Money left over is labelled "Left before rent and council tax" instead of "Money left to save or for emergencies", which overstated what's really left for households who top up their rent.
• Footer rewritten in five short paragraphs, about a fifth shorter, with no facts lost. It now says the benefit cap is applied without help with rent, and that the tool is an illustration, not a benefits calculator.
• Travel for a working adult is now £28 a week, the price of First Bus's weekly ticket for the Bristol zone (from 4th January 2026). It was £22, which matched the Weston-super-Mare weekly ticket. The info text now names the ticket. QA scenarios 7, 8, 9 and 12 in the spec are recalculated. On a live site where this value was saved in the settings, update it or click Reset to defaults.

Fixed

• Unticking an essential no longer removes it from the list. The row stays, with its cost struck through, and only items that don't apply to the household (such as school uniform with no children aged 5 to 15) are hidden. This appeared in 1.2.0, when hidden rows started hiding properly.

Full Changelog: v1.2.0...v1.3.0

v1.2.0

Requires at least: 5.8
Requires PHP: 7.4

Changed

• Desktop layout (981px and up, Divi's desktop breakpoint) has three columns: household, essentials, and the result at the top of the third. Tablet and phone still stack them. On small desktop screens, income and essentials stack inside the result panel so the figures fit.
• On desktop with a mouse, each essential's ⓘ explanation opens as an overlay on hover. It stays open while you move onto it, stays open if you click, and closes with Escape or a click elsewhere. Tablet and phone keep tap-to-open below the row.
• Footer: deductions figure updated to 47% of UC households in May 2026 (DWP deductions statistics, published 18th August 2026).
• School uniform info text names the legal limit on branded items in force since September 2026: 3 items, or 4 at secondary school if one is a tie.

Fixed

• The school uniform row now hides when there are no children aged 5 to 15, as intended. Before, it showed £0.00.

Full Changelog: v1.1.0...v1.2.0

v1.1.0

Requires at least: 5.8
Requires PHP: 7.4

Changed

• UC figures updated for 2026/27: the work allowance for households with children rises from £673 to £710 a month.
• The benefit cap for outside London is now applied, per benefit unit, with Child Benefit counted towards it and the £881 a month earnings exemption. A note appears in the result panel when the cap lowers the UC shown.
• Footer: deductions now read "almost half of UC households (46% in February 2026), usually up to 15%". It says the benefit cap is applied, mentions free school meals, the Warm Home Discount and Healthy Start as other help, and lists the benefit cap and Child Benefit among the sources.
• Settings page: only values you change are saved. Fields left at the default now pick up new figures from each plugin update. Before this, clicking Save Settings froze every field at its current value.
• Basket info panels open on click on every device. The desktop hover popover is gone.

Added

• Settings page: benefit cap, earnings threshold and Child Benefit rows.
• Settings page: fields that differ from the default say so, and a Reset to defaults button clears every saved value.
• Updates are now found by WordPress's background checks and WP-CLI, not only while you're in wp-admin, so automatic updates work. Check again on Dashboard → Updates bypasses the 12-hour cache.
• Each release has an installable uc-calc.zip attached, holding only the files the plugin needs.

Fixed

• The calculator now starts when caching plugins such as LiteSpeed Cache delay JavaScript until the visitor interacts with the page.
• Accessibility: the adult and child counters no longer claim arrow-key support they didn't have, and screen readers announce the new count. The labels above the income and essentials figures and the info buttons now meet contrast requirements.
• Negative take-home pay is treated as £0 instead of reducing income.
• Uninstalling also removes the cached update data, on every site of a multisite network.

What's Changed

• Bump esbuild to ^0.25.0 to fix CORS dev-server CVE (GHSA-67mh-4wv8-2f99) by @aidanashby in #1
• Update plugin for 2026/27 policy, fix updater and uninstall, add monitoring routine by @aidanashby in #2

New Contributors

• @aidanashby made their first contribution in #1

Full Changelog: v1.0.0...v1.1.0

v1.0.0 — Initial release

First release of UC Calculator.

A client-side Universal Credit vs essentials weekly comparison tool, built for North Bristol & South Glos Foodbank's Guarantee Our Essentials campaign.

Features

• Calculates weekly UC income for any household composition (up to 6 adults, 8 children, couples, mixed working/non-working)
• Compares to a basket of typical weekly essentials: food, energy, water, mobile, broadband, travel, toiletries, cleaning, clothes, school uniform, sundries, TV licence
• Admin settings page (Settings → UC Calculator) for editing all rates and costs
• Full translatability via the uc-calc text domain
• Self-updates from GitHub releases (Update URI plugin header)
• Conditional asset enqueue (loads CSS/JS only on pages using the shortcode)

Usage

Add the shortcode [uc_calculator] to any page or post.

Requirements

Tested up to: 6.8
Requires at least: 5.8
Requires PHP: 7.4