Children: Maintenance
Work and Pensions

Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne, Liberal Democrat)

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions with reference to the special teams established by the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission in 2010 to target historic child maintenance arrears, what work those teams have undertaken since their establishment to reduce historic arrears; and what assessment he has made of their success to date in collecting arrears owed.

Maria Miller (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Disabled People), Work and Pensions; Basingstoke, Conservative)

The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission is responsible for the child maintenance system. I have asked the Child Maintenance Commissioner to write to the hon. Member with the information requested and I have seen the response.

Letter from Noel Shanahan

In reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Child Maintenance Commissioner.

You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the special teams established by the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission in 2010 to target historic child maintenance arrears, what work those teams have undertaken since their establishment to reduce historic arrears; and what assessment he has made of their success to date in collecting arrears owed.

In 2010 the Child Support Agency implemented a strategy to recover arrears from cases that had been dormant for some considerable time. Around 40,000 cases were identified and reviewed against HM Revenue and Customs data to establish employment details with the work to recover arrears being prioritised on those cases where positive employment information had been returned.

Teams were created in all areas of the country to focus on this work. There was around 400 caseworkers involved in the project.

The teams contacted parents with care, non-resident parents and employers. We found that many families had made their own arrangements, that many parents with care did not want to re-open cases and that much of the HM Revenue and Customs data was no longer current and we were still unable to trace many of the non-resident parents listed.

However, our caseworkers have made considerable progress. As a result of this action we have cleared 21,000 cases and collected maintenance for 30,000 parents with care benefiting 39,000 children with payments totalling £23,000,000.