This is an HTML version of an attachment to the Freedom of Information request 'Child Maintenance Compliance and Arrears Strategy'.


                                                  Minister for Family Support, 
Housing and Child Maintenance 
4th Floor                                                                                                                                
Caxton House                                                                                                                                
Tothill Street                                                                                                                                                         
LONDON                                                                                                                                
SW1H 9DA 
                                         
www.dwp.gov.uk 
 
 
13th July 2018 
 
 
Dear Heidi Allen MP,  
 
 
I am writing to update you on the ongoing work my department is undertaking 
in relation to a new Child Maintenance Compliance and Arrears Strategy as I 
know you may have an interest in it. The reformed child maintenance system 
which has been in place since December 2012 provides strong incentives for 
parents to work together following separation and where possible, make 
family-based arrangements for child maintenance. This is because of the clear 
evidence that children in separated families benefit from good quality 
relationships between their parents.   
 
We know that most separated parents want to take financial responsibility for 
their children and many families are able to make their own arrangements for 
this. The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) is there for those unable to make 
a private arrangement. Following careful, staged implementation the CMS is 
working well for many parents, avoiding the delays and backlogs which 
characterised the predecessor schemes. The CMS continues to pursue 
paying parents who refuse to meet their obligations. As of September this year 
we have 11,100 civil enforcement actions in process, around 4,000 more than 
during the same period last year. 
 
I am determined to ensure that these new arrangements continue to work well 
for families and evolve to respond to wider changes in society like the growth 
of self-employment.    The new Child Maintenance Compliance and Arrears 
Strategy takes account of evaluation of the scheme to date, customer 
experiences and issues raised by stakeholders including the Work and 
Pensions Select Committee. Our proposals reflect an emerging need to 
further strengthen the statutory system to ensure in particular that complex 
earners have a fairer maintenance assessment and that we do more to 
prevent parents evading their financial obligations to their children. 
 
 

Our strategy also proposes to end the uncertainty for families in the thousands 
of Child Support Agency (CSA) cases with arrears which have been held in 
limbo – often for many years. A situation that both the National Audit Office 
and the Work and Pensions Select Committee have commented on.  In many 
of these cases the children are now adults themselves, the debt amounts are 
often small; and in some cases when asked, parents have moved on with their 
lives and are not interested in pursuing this debt. The reality is that if we were 
to attempt to collect all the debt we could only recover a fraction of the £3.6 
billion owed, at an estimated cost of £1.5 billion. 
 
We plan to offer parents a final chance to ask us to consider taking action to 
collect this debt, where it is likely to be possible at a reasonable cost to the 
taxpayer.  This would enable these cases to be finally closed in the next few 
years – giving clarity for the families and allowing the CSA IT systems to be 
decommissioned, making savings for the taxpayer. 
 
We consulted on the new Child Maintenance Compliance and Arrears 
Strategy between 14th December 2018 and 8th February 2018.   The 
consultation was well received, both stakeholders and individuals welcomed 
the changes to the assessment process and new collection powers.  They 
also accepted the need to address the CSA cases that still have outstanding 
arrears.    
 
I formally published the department’s Child Maintenance Compliance and 
Arrears Strategy yesterday and this can be found on gov.uk.  This will be 
followed by two packages of regulations. I expect to lay the first of these 
ahead of summer recess this year and will include changes to: 
  improve the child maintenance assessment,  
  enable deductions from joint and unlimited partnership and business 
accounts,  
  disqualify those parents who consistently fail to meet their financial 
responsibility to their children from holding a UK passport; and 
  Address historic arrears held on CSA by giving parents the chance to 
request we attempt to collect their arrears where it is cost effective to 
do so. 
The second package will make changes to deductions from benefits to extend 
these powers so that we can continue to deduct from benefits to collect 
arrears of unpaid maintenance when on-going maintenance ends.  We will 
also apply these powers to a broader range of benefits including Universal 
Credit.  It is my intention that these changes are laid in the house during the 
first part of 2019. 
 
 


I appreciate these changes may raise a number of queries so I would like to 
invite you to an information session to give you an overview of the changes. I 
am holding time in my diary on: 
  18th July from 17:00 – 18:30; or  
  23rd July from 17:00 – 19:00. 
Please contact xxxx@xxx.xxx.xxx.xx if you would like to attend.  
 
I hope you find this letter useful. 
 
 
 
 
 

Justin Tomlinson MP 
 
Minister for Family Support, Housing and Child Maintenance