Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many consolatory payments were made to (a) paying and (b) receiving parents by the Child Maintenance Service in each of the last three years.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
The department hold records of how many consolatory payments were authorised for Child Maintenance Service customers. This information is provided in the table. We are unable to supply a breakdown of payments made to paying and receiving parents without additional work at disproportionate cost.
Year | No. of consolatory payments authorised |
2022/2023 | 2107 |
2023/2024 | 2634 |
2024/2025 | 2189 |
Asked by: Max Wilkinson (Liberal Democrat - Cheltenham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the Child Maintenance Service's arrears department is (i) office based and (ii) staffed through home working; how many people work for that team; what their response time is; and whether that response time is in line with their service level agreement.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) arrears department operates using a combination of office‑based and hybrid working arrangements. CMS currently offers the opportunity to work a minimum of 60% of time in the office with 40% at home, although staff can choose to work more time in the office if they wish. Some choose to work in the office full time. The only exceptions to this are individual requirements as part of a reasonable adjustment. Hybrid working is not a contractual right and is therefore subject to change. There are currently 771 employees working in the arrears team.
CMS monitors the performance of the arrears function. Caseworker response times remain consistent across both office‑based and home‑working arrangements and continue to operate fully within the Service Level Agreement for the arrears function.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many an what percentage of cases concerning the Child Maintenance Service referred to Independent Case Examiners were (a) wholly upheld, (b) partially upheld and (c) wholly dismissed in each of the last three years.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Independent Case Examiner publishes an Annual Report each year. Data relating to upheld rates for DWP and its individual service lines, including the Child Maintenance Service, for the years being requested, can be found within those reports.
The Independent Case Examiner’s Annual Reports are available on gov.uk. DWP complaints: Annual reports by the Independent Case Examiner - GOV.UK
Asked by: Ian Sollom (Liberal Democrat - St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what progress his Department has made on (a) improving access to and (b) streamlining the enforcement processes of the Child Maintenance Service.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government intends to remove the Direct Pay service and thereby speed up detection of non-compliance. Moving to a single, strengthened Collect and Pay system will allow the CMS to monitor all payments, identify missed or partial payments immediately, and take faster enforcement action. Ahead of this change, the CMS is already moving non-compliant parents more quickly from Direct Pay to Collect and Pay.
To further improve arrears collection, the CMS will introduce administrative liability orders (ALOs) to replace the current court-based process. This will streamline enforcement, reduce delays, and help the CMS act more quickly against parents who avoid their responsibilities. Work with HM Courts and Tribunals Service and the Scottish Government is underway, and regulations will be brought to Parliament as soon as possible.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what percentage of cases concerning the Child Maintenance Service referred to the Parliamentary Health and Health Service Ombudsman were (a) wholly upheld, (b) partially upheld and (c) wholly dismissed in each of the last three years.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
This is a matter for the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s office. The Ombudsman publishes case statistics annually on her website: Publications | Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO)
Asked by: Ian Sollom (Liberal Democrat - St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what progress his department has made on the review of the Child Maintenance Service calculation announced on 24 June 2025.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
We will announce further details about the publication of the Government’s consultation regarding the child maintenance calculation in due course.
Given the significant amount of time since the child maintenance calculation was updated, we need to assess carefully the impact of any proposed changes on all parents that use the CMS to ensure they effectively support families and children and that they are introduced in a way which works well for CMS customers.
Asked by: Zöe Franklin (Liberal Democrat - Guildford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to prevent enforcement correspondence being issued by the Child Maintenance Service where maintenance has been paid early but outside the Service’s payment window.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Correspondence issued by the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) referencing enforcement action as being considered should only be issued if a customer has missed payments due and has fallen into arrears.
CMS is currently reviewing its processes to ensure that this principle is consistently applied and that such correspondence is not issued where payments have been made.
Asked by: David Chadwick (Liberal Democrat - Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of the Child Maintenance Service policy in establishing the Paying Parent, in the context of changes in societal norms and the increase in co-parenting and shared parenting arrangements.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The person providing primary care of the child and with whom the child lives is entitled to make an application for child maintenance. This is known as the receiving parent. The receiving parent is determined by which parent looks after the child most of the time. For example, with whom the child has their home and who usually provides day to day care for the child.
The Child Maintenance Calculation can be amended to reflect co-parenting and shared parenting arrangements. A paying parent’s maintenance liability can be reduced where they have overnight care of a child for whom they pay maintenance. This reduction is intended to broadly reflect the cost associated with any overnight care given. The paying parent must have overnight care of any qualifying children for at least 52 nights a year, equivalent to 1 night per week. The amount payable is reduced to a maximum of 50 per cent within bands based on the number of days overnight care is provided over a 12-month period.
The CMS uses bands based on the number of days overnight care is provided, to ensure a fair, consistent, and administratively efficient method of accounting for the costs borne by each parent.
If the CMS is satisfied that both parents have equal day-to-day care for the child, in addition to sharing overnight care, there is no requirement for either parent to pay child maintenance.
There is no statutory definition of day-to-day care, our definition is broadly aligned with that of Child Benefit, where an ‘overall care test’ is used. This provides consistency across government and receipt of Child Benefit is regarded as a good indicator of who is entitled to child maintenance payments.
Asked by: Zöe Franklin (Liberal Democrat - Guildford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of enforcement correspondence issued by the Child Maintenance Service in cases involving very small arrears, including where that correspondence refers to bailiff action, licence removal and imprisonment.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) missed payment and arrears notifications do reference potential enforcement action that can be considered, should a paying parent continue to miss or avoid making child maintenance payments. This is to ensure the paying parent fully understands the potential consequences if their non-compliance persists.
The notification also asks the paying parent to contact CMS immediately, so we can work with the parent paying to negotiate a sustainable and feasible repayment plan. For small arrears, payments can spread over an appropriate timescale negating the need for enforcement action. Only, where this is not possible will CMS consider the use of our wider enforcement powers.
CMS uses a small‑value threshold (de minimis) before taking certain enforcement actions. This is to make sure any charges to customers are fair and not excessive. Therefore, enforcement action is not likely to be taken against very small arrears.
Asked by: Zöe Franklin (Liberal Democrat - Guildford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, in what circumstances the Child Maintenance Service ceases to pursue historic child maintenance arrears.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Child Maintenance’s priority is to collect money owed to children who will benefit today, thereby preventing the build-up of arrears on the CMS.
The Child Maintenance Service has powers to write off historic Child Support Agency (CSA) and Child Maintenance Service debt in specific scenarios where it would be unfair or inappropriate to enforce liability, such as if the receiving parent tells us they no longer want us to collect the arrears or the paying parent is deceased and no further action can be taken to recover the arrears from the paying parent’s estate.
Powers introduced in 2018 allowed remaining Agency cases to be closed following the collection or write-off of historic arrears, as part of the closure of the scheme. All CSA arrears were at least five years old, with some CSA debt dating back much further. This was a one-off exercise, applying only to Agency debt.