Bulletins | September 15, 2017

Child Support Agency arrears transitioned to the Child Maintenance Service system – statistics

On 30 August 2017, the Department for Work and Pensions published statistics in relation to the Child Support Agency arrears transitioned to the Child Maintenance Service system.

The publication explains that “transitioned arrears are Secretary of State and/or Parent with Care debts accrued under the 1993 and 2003 [Child Support Agency] schemes which are managed on the CMS 2012 system following the progression of cases through the CSA Case Closure Programme”. This is because the CSA cases are gradually being closed and the new agency dealing with child maintenance is the Child Maintenance (“CMS”) which was launched in 2012.

The arrears owed by non-resident parents with the Child Support Agency that have been transferred to the Child Maintenance Service between November 2014 and June 2017 were set out and the statistics confirm that 179,000 casegroups had transitioned with an Initial Transitioned Arrears value of £561m. They further demonstrate that “the outstanding Arrears Balance, defined as the Initial Transitional Arrears less payment and adjustments made on CMS and any write-off that happened post-transition was £527m. The majority of arrears (80%) are owed to the Parent with Care and 20% are owed to the Secretary of State”.

Clearly, there is still a long way to go for the huge arrears to be recovered and I very much doubt that it is likely that they will all be.