Behind the attention-grabbing headlines presented by the coalition government, the reality for single parents who are owed child maintenance is very different. In this article, Janet Allbeson examines what exactly is going on and argues for a stretching of the arrears collection target, dedicated arrears enforcement teams, and greater transparency and accountability to single parents to whom the maintenance is owed.
Minister Steve Webb was tackled this week about the latest audited figures on child maintenance arrears which show that total arrears on Child Support Agency (CSA) cases had reached a grand total of £3,980 million, of which £2,917 million (73 per cent) had been designated as “uncollectable”. Only £512 million of all CSA arrears are now officially regarded as ever “likely to be collected”, with a further £563 million seen as “potentially collectable”. When challenged, the Minister pointed to his department’s success in getting non-resident parents to pay child maintenance now. He argued that “contributions towards child maintenance in the CSA are now running at an all-time high of 86.5%”.
For the hundreds of thousands of hard-pressed single parents who have been left waiting months, if not years, for the Agency to take effective action to collect the child maintenance arrears they are owed, the Minister’s upbeat comments make a mockery of their situation. There are currently over 726,000 single parents with dependent children who are collectively owed over £1,126 million in unpaid child maintenance. There are also a further 532,000 parents of children who are now grown up (called “yesterday’s children” by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)), whose maintenance arrears totalling a further £1.1 billion have been deemed a low priority for collection.
So how can the Minister and his Department be boasting of their success, when so many parents and children are still waiting for the maintenance they are owed to be paid and only a tiny fraction of the total is deemed “likely to be collected”? One reason is that the DWP counts it as a success if a parent has made any maintenance payment, however small, at least once in the last three months. Drill down below the 86.5 per cent headline, and the CSA’s own figures show that in a quarter of cases in the CSA’s collection service (25.5 per cent or 128,750 cases where maintenance was due) non-resident parents are paying less than half of their liability – including almost 20 per cent (18.4 per cent or 92,902 cases) paying nothing at all.
The DWP wants public attention to be on current maintenance. But every time a parent fails to pay the full amount due, debts start to build up. Focusing simply on a snapshot of the numbers paying some maintenance now, is to overlook all the past payments which have been missed.
Maintenance arrears are not just history. Non-payment leaves a huge financial hole for many parents bringing up a child on one income. It means debts which can take years of hardship and stress to pay off, the loss of much-need savings, and it means children missing out: from having decent shoes and warm coats, to lacking school equipment and the chance to participate on school trips and have holidays.
The DWP says it has an “Arrears and Compliance Strategy” yet the focus is overwhelmingly on the latter. Of all non-resident parents with a CSA arrears liability, less than a fifth are paying anything towards their arrears. In more than half of all CSA arrears cases, no arrears payments have been made at all in the last two years.
The DWP has admitted that – in order to concentrate on preventing future arrears (i.e. compliance now), “there has been a reduction across enforcement activities in the last year”. The neglect of past missed payments of maintenance has meant that total child maintenance arrears are rising. After adjustments, the ‘true’ rise in arrears last year was £90.6 million. This is 70 per cent higher than the previous year’s ‘true’ increase in arrears of £53 million, which was itself more than double the £24m arrears increase for 2011/12.
The Minister hit the headlines recently promising new tough action on child maintenance debts, by reporting non-payers to credit reference agencies. But this will only happen if the CSA or new Child Maintenance Service has obtained a ‘liability order’ from the courts. The CSA’s own statistics show that, in the year 2013/14, the number of liability orders applied for actually fell by 31 per cent and the current year’s totals look likely to be even lower. Again, behind the attention-grabbing headlines, the reality for single parents is very different.
Of the £1.1 billion in existing CSA arrears owed to children today – the group the DWP say is its top priority – the department’s strategy document admitted that, between 2013 and 2018, it only expected to collect between £250-333 million of existing CSA debts over the five year period. This is shameful.
Active and energetic pursuit of child maintenance debts matters for two main reasons. First, child maintenance arrears – even if paid years late – can make a huge difference to single parents’ precarious family finances. Secondly, if child maintenance debts are let go, it contributes to a culture of non-compliance, where non-resident parents know that – if they delay long enough or pay just a little – they will not be pursued.
In 2010 when the present government first took office, it criticised the previous government for dropping an arrears collection target for the year 2010-11. It said “Arrears collection is a key priority and it is the coalition government’s intention to reintroduce an arrears target.” Is it a priority? Five years later, as the coalition government draws to a close, it is telling that an arrears recovery target has yet to be set.
I and my colleagues at Gingerbread want to see a stretching arrears collection target to ensure that money owed to children is given the priority it deserves. We also want to see dedicated arrears enforcement teams at the heart of child maintenance operations, plus greater transparency and accountability to single parents to whom the maintenance is owed.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the British Politics and Policy blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please read our comments policy before posting. Featured image credit: David Spender CC BY 2.0
Janet Allbeson is Senior Policy Adviser at Gingerbread. Formerly she was Committee Specialist to the Work and Pensions Select Committee and a lawyer specialising in social welfare law.
Whilst I am sympathetic to mothers whose ex partners do not pay I have seen at first hand how anti- male the CSA is. It is verging on downright bias.my son paid £300 a month for his 2 year old whom he had EVERY Tuesday and EVERY Friday till Sunday EVery week. He cut it to £250 after going on CSA website calculater and seeing photos of his ex on Facebook with her £500 Botox job.she phoned CSA said he had no contact at all with his daughter and they phoned him and said pay £450 a month or else. No is this true ??? Went to lawyer got a letter to say he had her paid £800 for this sent it to CSA said ok just pay £245. Meanwhile he did not see his daughter for 5 weeks. That was 6 months ago 6 weeks ago she done it again phoned them they believed her hasnt saw his daughter in 6 weeks. What is she doing to this child and why aren’t the CSA asking questions. Parents who use their child as a weapon or a cash machine do not deserve to be parents. The CSA more or less called my son a liar all they had to do was ask the nursery who picks her up every Friday and brings her back on a Monday. If it was the other way around it would be completely different
The reason why the CSA are challenged in court is because they are not realistic it what it cost to bring up a child, the financial demands are unfair! They are very anti male and are nothing more than cheap debt collectors asking for an extortionate amount of money…I know through experience that they will just take the money from your wage slip without working something out amicably that’s affordable. They don’t care of your finical circumstances or care about who they break in order to get their money, very similar to a loan shark! I know dads who have had to give up their jobs because the CSA demanded too much money and made it unviable to work! The CSA need to realise that its easier for parents to work something out together and not side with the female because in my experience mothers use this government agency as a tool…As the lady said in the first thread ‘she needed £500 per month to pay for her new house’ the money collected by the CSA which is given to you is not for you to go spending on houses, it’s for the children, the same children the CSA are trying to protect yet these are the ones that end up suffering the most because the system is a complete joke and this unfortunately destroys any hope of a happy upbringing!!
When I bought my house my maintenance payments were included as part of my income in order for me to get a mortgage to house my family. I was receiving £500 a month in maintenance. A year later (2013) with no warning or explanation the payments stopped and I’ve received little since. Every time it seems the CSA are getting somewhere my ex quits his job or goes on sick leave – unfortunately, he knows how to play the system. I’ve contacted my local MP and he could do nothing – it’s ok for a father to quit his job and be unable to support his children it seems.
If I decided to stop supporting my children, stop providing a roof over their heads, stop feeding them, stop clothing them – would that be neglect? One rule for one parent, one rule for the other.
I am fed up with the CSA and have been since I made my first application to them to seek maintenance from my ex husband as he refused to assist in the financial upbringing of our son. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that the blame ‘should’ lay with the absent parent BUT if I recall correctly, the CSA started to remove the thousands of cases being brought before the court (thereby stopping us parents seeking redress ourselves). At most, my ex husband owed (assessed at £99.00 a week and self employed -in itself a nightmare) £36k. Three liability orders and a flee in the ear from my MP and me sending a letter every week got 24 weeks (lol) I finally received £100 a week. My son was then 17 years old. Lasted for 10 weeks, then he stopped. Then the CSa sent a letter, and it started again. However, with £8k to go, he has now stopped paying. A call to the CSA and some strong words and I am told ‘we are only taking action against those absent parents where the child is still of school age). I asked if they couldn’t just go back to coyrt,I’m was told no, but they would send him a letter. I have had no money since (6 months) no course of redress, and once again amother big headache. According to the CSA, this reaction to me and parents like me (where the CSa failed while my child WAS still of school age) is solely due to resources and instruction ‘from above’ ( and I don’t mean God). Awful. Wish I could stop paying my tax and NI with such ease! Oh well.
Great article and really heartened to see that someone is still talking about this issue. The children of single parents have been sold down the river by a CSA which has not been fit for purpose. In my case my son is owed £10K and his life could have been very different.
I still think there should be a public inquiry into how and why so many children have been let down. Everyone got paid in this poverty industry but the children and it is not good enough. It is also interesting that this has been such a non story for so long. I guess it’#s easier to demonise single parents than give them the support promised in the glossy brochures.