Children: Maintenance

(asked on 20th May 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what support is provided to parents who do not receive child maintenance payments on time.


Answered by
Will Quince Portrait
Will Quince
This question was answered on 23rd May 2019

It is a key principle that unpaid child maintenance should be paid immediately. Where a non-resident parent fails to pay on time or in full, we aim to take immediate action to recover the unpaid maintenance and re-establish compliance.

Where compliance is not achieved and the non-resident parent is employed we will attempt to deduct their maintenance (and/or any arrears) direct from their earnings via a deduction from earnings order. Employers are obliged by law to take this action for us.

We have a range of other strong enforcement powers, including deducting child maintenance directly from bank accounts, using Enforcement Agents to take control of goods, forcing the sale of property, disqualification from driving or commitment to prison as well as restrictions on applying for and holding a passport.

As part of our new Compliance and Arrears Strategy we have further strengthened our collection and enforcement powers to enable us to deduct child maintenance from a wider range of bank accounts and enable us to apply to the court for an order to disqualify a parent with child maintenance arrears from holding or obtaining a UK passport.

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