Children: Maintenance

(asked on 17th November 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether additional charges and fines placed on parents paying child maintenance have been (a) revised and (b) temporarily halted due to financial hardship as a result of the covid-19 outbreak.


Answered by
Guy Opperman Portrait
Guy Opperman
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
This question was answered on 23rd November 2020

Collection charges apply when a case is being managed in the Collect and Pay service. The Direct Pay service does not incur any on-going collection charges. Charges have not been paused as a result of the covid-19 outbreak. We expect paying parents to do the right thing and continue to pay child maintenance due. Where paying parents experience a change in income, the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) can review their case and check if the amount paid should change. To help reduce the short-term financial pressure that may be experienced by many paying parents whose income has been affected by the Covid 19 outbreak, the time period over which that change in income is assessed has been reduced from 12 to 2 weeks.

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