Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to increase the percentage of applications cleared by the Child Maintenance Service within six weeks.

In the year to June 2024 there were 138,000 new applications to the Child Maintenance Service, an increase of 10% since June 2023.

The Department’s most recently published statistics show that 76% of applications received were cleared within 6 weeks (up to the quarter ending March 2024).

The Department publishes quarterly statistics for the Child Maintenance Service. Please see tables 1 and 2 of the national tables for more information on applications.

Additional resources have been deployed to process new applications in order to meet increased customer demand. Service Modernisation improvements have been made to processes and systems to increase automation and allow both receiving and paying parents to manage their application online. This allows us to serve them faster as well as freeing up resources to help customers who need greater support.