Children: Maintenance
(asked on 30th May 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many requests for a mandatory reconsideration have been made by parents who have been instructed to pay child maintenance following an initial maintenance calculation in each of the last 5 years.
A Mandatory Reconsideration is where a parent has asked the Child Maintenance Service to reconsider a decision. It is a process that must be completed before the right to appeal to an independent tribunal with His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service.
A Mandatory Reconsideration can be requested during the lifetime of a case or when a new application is made, for Child Maintenance and the application is unsuccessful.
Where the Child Maintenance Service finds the original decision to be incorrect or if the parent has supplied more information the decision can change.
The full information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
The Department publishes quarterly statistics for the Child Maintenance Service and the latest statistics are currently available to December 2024. Table 9 of the latest National tables provides the total number of mandatory reconsideration requests received by the CMS and the outcomes occurring each quarter, from April 2015 to December 2024. Data from Table 9 for January 2020 to December 2024 is shown in the following table:
Mandatory Reconsiderations: the number of requests received by the Child Maintenance Service to reconsider a decision, and the outcomes occurring each quarter, Great Britain, January 2020 to December 2024
Quarter | Received | Cleared: | Cleared: | Cleared: | Number Cleared Within 28 Days of Receipt | Percentage Cleared Within 28 Days of Receipt (%) |
Jan to Mar 2020 | 12,000 | 3,200 | 4,400 | 9,400 | 7,800 | 83% |
Apr to Jun 2020 | 6,200 | 3,000 | 3,200 | 7,500 | 3,000 | 40% |
Jul to Sep 2020 | 9,900 | 2,500 | 3,300 | 7,500 | 5,600 | 74% |
Oct to Dec 2020 | 11,700 | 2,700 | 4,100 | 9,300 | 5,200 | 56% |
Jan to Mar 2021 | 15,700 | 4,200 | 5,500 | 12,900 | 6,800 | 53% |
Apr to Jun 2021 | 16,200 | 5,000 | 6,400 | 14,500 | 9,000 | 62% |
Jul to Sep 2021 | 17,100 | 5,500 | 8,100 | 17,700 | 11,900 | 68% |
Oct to Dec 2021 | 17,600 | 5,700 | 7,300 | 16,700 | 13,000 | 78% |
Jan to Mar 2022 | 19,300 | 5,400 | 7,300 | 16,600 | 12,600 | 76% |
Apr to Jun 2022 | 14,700 | 4,300 | 7,300 | 14,200 | 9,600 | 68% |
Jul to Sep 2022 | 14,600 | 3,700 | 7,500 | 13,800 | 9,900 | 71% |
Oct to Dec 2022 | 14,500 | 4,700 | 7,900 | 15,500 | 11,300 | 73% |
Jan to Mar 2023 | 16,300 | 4,300 | 7,200 | 14,300 | 11,800 | 82% |
Apr to Jun 2023 | 21,900 | 4,000 | 7,200 | 14,400 | 11,100 | 77% |
Jul to Sep 2023 | 13,900 | 4,000 | 7,300 | 14,500 | 11,200 | 78% |
Oct to Dec 2023 | 13,800 | 3,700 | 6,000 | 12,400 | 10,000 | 80% |
Jan to Mar 2024 | 17,200 | 4,000 | 7,100 | 14,100 | 11,100 | 78% |
Apr to Jun 2024 | 17,800 | 4,300 | 8,500 | 16,000 | 11,900 | 74% |
Jul to Sep 2024 | 21,800 | 5,700 | 11,400 | 20,700 | 16,400 | 79% |
Oct to Dec 2024 | 21,800 | 6,200 | 11,900 | 21,800 | 18,100 | 83% |
Source: Child Maintenance Service Management Information
Notes
- A Mandatory Reconsideration is where a parent has asked the Child Maintenance Service to reconsider a decision. Mandatory Reconsiderations can include multiple requests per parent or arrangement. All requests are counted.
- Cleared excludes mandatory reconsiderations that have been cancelled or raised in error.
- Where the Child Maintenance Service finds the original decision to be incorrect or if the parent has supplied more information which changes the decision.
- Some clearances cannot be categorised as 'revised' or 'not revised'. So the total cleared number will be higher than the sum of the other two categories.
- The calculation is based on 28 calendar days. This is usually equivalent to 20 working days.
- The measure of timeliness, calculates the number of Mandatory Reconsiderations cleared within 28 days of receipt (column F) over the total cleared within the quarter (column E).
- During the quarter ending June 2020, the Child Maintenance Service was affected by the COVID-19 outbreak and the resultant changes to the Department’s operational priorities and staffing resources.
- Figures are rounded to the nearest 100 or 1%.
- These statistics are published in Table 9 of the latest CMS National tables.