Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average time was for arrears to be (a) assessed and (b) applied in relation to cases transferred from the Child Support Agency to the Child Maintenance Service.

In the spirit of answering the question let me briefly describe the approach to assessing and applying arrears. On our old CSA systems we need to undertake action to ensure that we are assured the arrears amount is as accurate as possible before we trigger the movement of the amount to our new CMS IT systems. Once movement has been triggered our CMS caseworkers need to review the amount and apply it to the CMS case/scheduled for payment. Since April -18 the average time taken to apply arrears was 81.03 days, for work completed in August 18 the time taken has reduced to 62.15 days.