Recommendations & Conclusions
15 items
3
Recommendation
Ninth Report - Child Maintenance
Accepted
The Department’s system of child maintenance is not designed to protect those subject to domestic abuse or coercive control. The Department designed the current child maintenance system to emphasise collaboration between parents, with the CMS available as a voluntary safety net that separated parents can choose to use if they …
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The Department’s system of child maintenance is not designed to protect those subject to domestic abuse or coercive control. The Department designed the current child maintenance system to emphasise collaboration between parents, with the CMS available as a voluntary safety net that separated parents can choose to use if they decide to. For survivors of domestic abuse, the CMS may be the safest and only way to secure maintenance from their ex-partner. Around three in five parents that apply to CMS report that they or their child had experienced domestic abuse. The Department points to the training and controls it has put in place to protect such parents subject to domestic abuse and coercive control. However, we are deeply concerned by submissions from stakeholders relating to how the CMS fails to provide these parents with appropriate support or consideration for their circumstances, and how the system exacerbates conflict between parents and financial coercion by requiring intervention from the receiving parent before CMS can take action in a case. This leaves the system open to being ‘played’ by parents wishing to exert coercive control over the other parent, including using the child maintenance system to continue to abuse their former partners, for example by withholding payments or access to children. The Department does not investigate why people stop using its services and whether there are any issues of financial or other coercion in such cases. It also knows little about separated parents without any form of arrangement, and therefore, whether some victims of domestic abuse of coercive control are prevented from using the service. Recommendation: The Department should, as part of its Treasury Minute response, outline how it will identify cases which potentially involve domestic abuse or coercive control and adapt its services and communications in response. It should build into its transformation plans: clearer routes for parents to flag and communicate do
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Government response AI summary
The department has robust processes and training in place for identifying victims of domestic abuse. They will also assess the forthcoming Domestic Abuse Statutory Guidance and adapt their Transformation Programme to incorporate further support and communications with domestic abuse survivors, with considerations for more comprehensive …
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HM Treasury
6
Recommendation
Ninth Report - Child Maintenance
Accepted
The Department is too slow to take effective enforcement action, leaving children without maintenance for too long and allowing child maintenance arrears to grow. The Department designed its CMS scheme to encourage parents to use Direct Pay first, and the supporting legislation forces some receiving parents onto Direct Pay even …
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The Department is too slow to take effective enforcement action, leaving children without maintenance for too long and allowing child maintenance arrears to grow. The Department designed its CMS scheme to encourage parents to use Direct Pay first, and the supporting legislation forces some receiving parents onto Direct Pay even when they assert correctly that their ex-partner will not pay. It is therefore no surprise that around half of new Direct Pay arrangements are either not sustained or are not effective, allowing unpaid maintenance debts to build to an average of £1,100 before the parents eventually move onto Collect & Pay. The Department accepts that it needs to go further to identify non-paying Direct Pay cases more quickly. The Department has improved compliance rates on Collect & Pay but around half of paying parents still paid less maintenance than was due in the quarter ending September 2021. Where paying parents continue to be non- compliant, the Department is slow to advance cases onto civil enforcement action. The Department told us it wants to speed up its enforcement processes but is restricted in how it can pursue unpaid maintenance, as many of the enforcement steps are defined by legislation and require action by external bodies, such as the courts. As a result, it can take years before payments are made to receiving parents whilst arrears continue to build. In addition, some paying parents simply cannot afford maintenance payments, meaning enforcement is unlikely to result in any more maintenance actually being paid. The amount of money owed by paying parents is forecast to reach £1 billion by March 2031, and, without legislative change is at risk of growing indefinitely. Child Maintenance 9 Recommendation: The Department should, within one year: • conduct operational and user research to better understand how customers progress through its collection and enforcement process, to identify any operational or legislative barriers to reducing the ove
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Government response AI summary
The government agrees with the recommendation to conduct research to understand how customers progress through the collection and enforcement process and is already completing insight and analysis and utilising existing user research. It is reviewing its internal processes and current organisational design structure to ensure …
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HM Treasury
14
Recommendation
Ninth Report - Child Maintenance
Accepted
Customer satisfaction with the CMS is no better than under the old CSA schemes. The Department’s internal survey results show that in the quarter ending December 2019 (before the pandemic), the Department’s customer satisfaction rating was 60%. This is lower than it was when the 2012 scheme was first introduced …
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Customer satisfaction with the CMS is no better than under the old CSA schemes. The Department’s internal survey results show that in the quarter ending December 2019 (before the pandemic), the Department’s customer satisfaction rating was 60%. This is lower than it was when the 2012 scheme was first introduced to replace the CSA schemes, which were widely regarded as having failed to manage child maintenance adequately. More recently, the Department has incorporated its customer satisfaction survey for CMG into is wider departmental customer experience survey. Under this measure, less than half (46%) of customers were satisfied with the service they received in the quarter ending September 2020.21
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Government response AI summary
The government agrees to develop performance indicators to understand low customer satisfaction and target improvements. They will build on the customer service strategy, analyze complaints, conduct user research, and introduce a "Voice of the Customer" program.
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HM Treasury
15
Recommendation
Ninth Report - Child Maintenance
Accepted
The Department’s Customer Charter (the Charter) covers four customer service areas: ‘ease of access’; ‘getting it right’; ‘keeping you informed’; and ‘right treatment’. The NAO found that it is difficult to assess the Department objectively against these areas because the Department has not identified a suite of performance measures, management …
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The Department’s Customer Charter (the Charter) covers four customer service areas: ‘ease of access’; ‘getting it right’; ‘keeping you informed’; and ‘right treatment’. The NAO found that it is difficult to assess the Department objectively against these areas because the Department has not identified a suite of performance measures, management information and benchmarks that it needs to assess whether it is providing a reasonable level of service.22 The Department told us that in its view, “there is actually quite a lot of evidence that suggests the service is getting better”, such as improved payment compliance and accuracy.23 However, there has been no noticeable improvement in how its customers perceive the Department’s performance in the four areas, and some aspects of customer service have declined. For example, the C&AG’s report shows that Charter scores based on customer survey responses relating to ‘ease of access’, ‘keeping you informed’ and ‘right treatment’ appear no better for the quarter ending December 2019 than they did for the quarter ending June 2017. In addition, the average amount of time taken to answer telephone calls increased substantially, from 26 seconds in the quarter ending June 2018, to 21 minutes in the quarter ending September 2021.24
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Government response AI summary
The department will use its digital transformation to develop performance indicators and target improvement where data suggests service issues. They will also develop user research focused on customer perception and introduce a program allowing real-time gathering of customer feedback.
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HM Treasury
16
Recommendation
Ninth Report - Child Maintenance
Accepted
The Department received 6,521 complaints about child maintenance (around six for every 1,000 customers) in the year to 30 September 2021. This was considerably down from pre-pandemic levels in line with a general fall in complaints to the Department during the pandemic. Of the 6512 complaints received, the Department upheld …
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The Department received 6,521 complaints about child maintenance (around six for every 1,000 customers) in the year to 30 September 2021. This was considerably down from pre-pandemic levels in line with a general fall in complaints to the Department during the pandemic. Of the 6512 complaints received, the Department upheld 1,278 (1.15 per 1,000 customers). This is the highest per customer rate for any business area within the Department. The Department only upholds a complaint if, on investigation, it agrees that the aspect of service complained about was below the standard expected.25 The Department explained that the number of upheld complaints was coming down and that it considered this was “a sign of positive action”. The Department told us that we would continue to see it “reducing levels of upheld complaints going forward”.26
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Government response AI summary
The government agrees to develop performance indicators to understand low customer satisfaction and target improvements. They will build on the customer service strategy, analyze complaints, conduct user research, and introduce a "Voice of the Customer" program.
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HM Treasury
18
Recommendation
Ninth Report - Child Maintenance
Accepted
The Department designed the current child maintenance system to emphasise collaboration between parents, with the CMS available as a voluntary safety net for those separated parents to choose to use if they decide to.31 Written evidence from the Domestic Abuse Commissioner referred to the Department’s data suggesting “a strong prevalence …
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The Department designed the current child maintenance system to emphasise collaboration between parents, with the CMS available as a voluntary safety net for those separated parents to choose to use if they decide to.31 Written evidence from the Domestic Abuse Commissioner referred to the Department’s data suggesting “a strong prevalence of domestic abuse among receiving parents accessing the CMS”.32 Around two in three applicants to the CMS in the quarter ending September 2021 did not have to pay the application fee because they reported that they or their child had experienced domestic abuse.33
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Government response AI summary
The government agrees with the recommendation to outline how it will identify cases which potentially involve domestic abuse or coercive control and adapt its services and communications in response, and describes existing and planned measures.
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HM Treasury
19
Recommendation
Ninth Report - Child Maintenance
Accepted
Parents can use the child maintenance system to continue to abuse their former partners, for example by withholding payments or access to children. Written evidence from Gingerbread and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner set out that, for survivors of domestic abuse, the CMS may be the safest and only way to …
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Parents can use the child maintenance system to continue to abuse their former partners, for example by withholding payments or access to children. Written evidence from Gingerbread and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner set out that, for survivors of domestic abuse, the CMS may be the safest and only way to secure maintenance from their ex-partner.34 However, although vulnerable and low-income families, those with disabilities, and those with higher levels of parental conflict are more likely to have no arrangement in place, the Department knows little about separated parents without any form of arrangement.35 It does not know how many cases there are in which domestic abuse or coercive control may be a barrier to setting up and maintaining an effective child maintenance arrangement. The Department’s legislation is designed to encourage parents who do use the CMS to use Direct Pay first to encourage collaboration.36 The Domestic Abuse Commissioner told us that it “would encourage caution in any efforts by the CMS to encourage collaboration between receiving and paying parents. It is vital that an emphasis 27 C&AG’s report, para 3.7 28 Qq 129, 131 29 Qq 129–131; C&AG’s Report, paras 3.7, 3.9 30 Qq 128, 131 31 C&AG’s Report, para 1.19 32 CMS 0044, written evidence submitted by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, 22 March 2022. 33 Department for Work & Pensions, National Tables Child Maintenance Service Statistics data to September 2021, Table 2 34 CMS 0042, written evidence submitted by Gingerbread, 22 March 2022; CMS 0044 35 Q42; C&AG’s Report, paras 1.22, 1.24, 2.11 and 2.13 36 C&AG’s Report, paras 2.9–2.12 Child Maintenance 17 on collaboration does not lead to CMS staff failing to hear concerns from victims and survivors about the risks the perpetrator poses to them and their children.”37 It further cautioned that Direct Pay arrangements can increase the harm and risk to victims of domestic abuse because they have to ask the perpetrator directly for payments.38
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Government response AI summary
The government agrees to identify cases involving domestic abuse or coercive control and adapt services/communications. They cite existing processes like call scripts and mandatory training, and are adapting the Transformation Programme to incorporate further support for domestic abuse survivors throughout the customer journey.
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HM Treasury
20
Recommendation
Ninth Report - Child Maintenance
Accepted
We asked the Department how it ensured that its approach to monitoring child maintenance cases was properly identifying and addressing cases of domestic abuse and coercive control, rather than waiting to be alerted through non-payment or through the receiving parent raising concerns, especially when they might not be in a …
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We asked the Department how it ensured that its approach to monitoring child maintenance cases was properly identifying and addressing cases of domestic abuse and coercive control, rather than waiting to be alerted through non-payment or through the receiving parent raising concerns, especially when they might not be in a position to do so. We were particularly concerned to hear of cases where parents reported that their relationship with the other parent had deteriorated as a result of them requesting a review of their finances. The NAO reported that the Department does not monitor the experiences of all customers of its Direct Pay service. The Department acknowledged that there were customers with whom it would not engage regularly.39 The Department also does not routinely contact customers after they have stopped using the CMS and therefore does not know whether domestic abuse and coercive control was a factor in that decision, or the long-term impact of the CMS on their relationship. It told us that “there is an equal amount of evidence—or more, even—of a family closing a case because it is actually working for them now and they do not need the service any longer as it has brought them together and the arrangements are working for them”.40 However, a Departmental survey found that 13 months after their Direct Pay calculation, 19% of parents had left the CMS and had no form of maintenance at all.41
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Government response AI summary
The government agrees to identify cases involving domestic abuse or coercive control and adapt services/communications. They cite existing processes like call scripts and mandatory training, and are adapting the Transformation Programme to incorporate further support for domestic abuse survivors throughout the customer journey.
Read full response →
HM Treasury
21
Recommendation
Ninth Report - Child Maintenance
Accepted
The Department told us that it provided specific training for staff to identify domestic abuse and coercive control, and that it could put in place controls to avoid contact with the paying parent (such as non-geographic bank accounts). It explained that it also had a “six-point domestic abuse plan for …
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The Department told us that it provided specific training for staff to identify domestic abuse and coercive control, and that it could put in place controls to avoid contact with the paying parent (such as non-geographic bank accounts). It explained that it also had a “six-point domestic abuse plan for any threat of danger”.42 However, stakeholders sent us evidence suggesting a lack of awareness, understanding and responsiveness on the part of the CMS. Gingerbread told us that 90 per cent of respondents to its survey who reported being subject to ongoing coercive control, did not feel that CMS staff had shown awareness of their situation in how they had responded to them. Families Need Fathers told us that “CMS is driving conflict amongst many parents to the detriment of their children”.43 An individual parent who wrote to us felt that the ex-partner’s attitude towards her had deteriorated significantly because she asked for a review of his finances.44 37 CMS 0044, para 16 38 CMS 0044, para 13 39 Qq 42–43; C&AG’s Report, paras 2.11–2.13 40 Q 9 41 C&AG’s Report, para 2.11 42 Q 39 43 CMS 0042, para 3.14; CMS 0044, para 8; CMS0037 written evidence submitted by Families Need Fathers, 22 March 2022, para 10 44 Q 40; Written Evidence CMS0009, Anonymised, 22 March 2022 18 Child Maintenance 3 Cost and effectiveness of administering child maintenance Enforcing maintenance payments
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Government response AI summary
The department will adapt its transformation programme to incorporate further support and communications with domestic abuse survivors into CMS organisational design and throughout the customer journey, and consider more comprehensive conversations to ensure customers are closing cases for the right reasons.
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HM Treasury
24
Recommendation
Ninth Report - Child Maintenance
Accepted
The Department has improved its enforcement of maintenance on Collect & Pay arrangements, but many parents receive less than they are entitled to. Compliance rates on Collect & Pay have risen from under one-third (31%) of paying parents contributing more than 90% of ongoing maintenance due in the quarter ending …
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The Department has improved its enforcement of maintenance on Collect & Pay arrangements, but many parents receive less than they are entitled to. Compliance rates on Collect & Pay have risen from under one-third (31%) of paying parents contributing more than 90% of ongoing maintenance due in the quarter ending March 2016 to around half (49%) in the quarter ending September 2021. The Department has also sped up some of its internal processes designed to enforce compliance. Despite this, many parents still receive less than they are entitled to. The Department does not record how long it takes customers to complete all the stages of its collection and enforcement processes and, for some 45 Q59; C&AG’s Report, paras 19–20 46 Qq 63 and 64; C&AG’s Report, para 2.12 47 Q 61 48 Qq 60 - 62; C&AG’s Report, paras 2.12–2.13 49 Qq 59, 62 Child Maintenance 19 receiving parents, it can take years for the Department to successfully enforce payments. As at September 2021, 7% (11,500) of paying parents with an ongoing arrangement had not paid any maintenance in more than 12 months whilst on Collect & Pay.50
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Government response AI summary
The government agrees to conduct operational and user research to understand the collection and enforcement process and develop a strategy to tackle unpaid maintenance debt, including reviewing legal processes and dependencies on third parties. They are also drafting regulations to extinguish low level debt and …
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HM Treasury
25
Recommendation
Ninth Report - Child Maintenance
Accepted
There are several reasons why enforcing payments can take a long time. For example, the Department can be slow to start civil enforcement activity where other attempts at collection have failed. As at September 2021, only around one-third (34%) of paying parents on Collect & Pay with ongoing maintenance arrangements …
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There are several reasons why enforcing payments can take a long time. For example, the Department can be slow to start civil enforcement activity where other attempts at collection have failed. As at September 2021, only around one-third (34%) of paying parents on Collect & Pay with ongoing maintenance arrangements who had not contributed for more than six months were being dealt with by the Department’s Enforcement Team.51 Many of the Department’s enforcement processes are set out in legislation and require action by external bodies. The Department told us that it wanted to further speed up its enforcement processes, but that “some of the points in the process are in other people’s hands.” For example, it explained that it needed to secure a liability order to move forward with civil enforcement and that in order to do this, it needed to secure court time. The Department confirmed that it was working towards ironing out these systemic delays.52 However, the NAO found that enforcement of arrears does not ensure ongoing compliance, and that even where CMS enforces the collection of unpaid maintenance the Paying Parents miss further payments in the meantime and end up owing £400 more than before the enforcement action started.53
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Government response AI summary
The department will continue to complete extensive operational insight and analysis to better understand how customers progress and inform a more efficient design. It is also reviewing legal processes and dependencies on third parties, with an implementation approach by Summer 2023, and drafting regulations to …
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HM Treasury
26
Recommendation
Ninth Report - Child Maintenance
Accepted
We asked the Department what use it was making of its enforcement powers.54 Parliament granted the Department additional enforcement powers in December 2018 and July 2019. The Department accepted that it has “a set of enforcement powers that are probably among the strongest in the world”, including the power to …
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We asked the Department what use it was making of its enforcement powers.54 Parliament granted the Department additional enforcement powers in December 2018 and July 2019. The Department accepted that it has “a set of enforcement powers that are probably among the strongest in the world”, including the power to suspend driving licenses and passports, and in the most extreme cases prison sentences.55 Between January 2020 and September 2021 in England and Wales, the Department secured six suspended disqualifications from driving, no (immediate or suspended) passport confiscations and five immediate prison sentences.56 The Department told us that to suspend passports or driving licences it had to demonstrate to a court that the customer could pay within six months. It explained that “all sanctions are deterrents” and that this was enough in a very large number of cases as “something like 80% of these cases get settled before they go to court”..57 The Department committed to supplying us with details of the number of cases that had been settled as a result of the threat of sanction rather than the sanction having to be used.58
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Government response AI summary
The government agrees to conduct operational and user research to understand the collection and enforcement process and develop a strategy to tackle unpaid maintenance debt, including reviewing legal processes and dependencies on third parties. They are also drafting regulations to extinguish low level debt and …
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HM Treasury
30
Recommendation
Ninth Report - Child Maintenance
Accepted
In 2011, the Department announced that it would close the old Child Support Agency (CSA) schemes and introduce the CMS. It decided, based on its analysis, that it would not be value for money to attempt to collect all the unpaid maintenance debt on the CSA schemes. The Department reduced …
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In 2011, the Department announced that it would close the old Child Support Agency (CSA) schemes and introduce the CMS. It decided, based on its analysis, that it would not be value for money to attempt to collect all the unpaid maintenance debt on the CSA schemes. The Department reduced the historic CSA debt relating to unpaid maintenance by £2.6 billion between December 2018 and March 2021 after deciding to largely write it off.64 Gingerbread, in its written evidence to us, told that it regularly heard from “single parents who were outraged at having debts written off, where the amount owed represented a lifetime of struggling with household budgeting” and that they had heard from resident parents who were owed more than £100,000.65
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Government response AI summary
The department will continue to complete extensive operational insight and analysis to better understand how customers progress and inform a more efficient design. It is also reviewing legal processes and dependencies on third parties, with an implementation approach by Summer 2023, and drafting regulations to …
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HM Treasury
31
Recommendation
Ninth Report - Child Maintenance
Accepted
The Department has no long-term strategy for tackling the growing unpaid maintenance balance under the current CMS scheme. Unpaid maintenance owed to parents on Collect & Pay has increased by more than £1 million per week to a total of £440 million as at October 2021.66 We therefore asked the …
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The Department has no long-term strategy for tackling the growing unpaid maintenance balance under the current CMS scheme. Unpaid maintenance owed to parents on Collect & Pay has increased by more than £1 million per week to a total of £440 million as at October 2021.66 We therefore asked the Department how it planned to address the increasing arrears balance within the scheme. The Department told us that “a lot of it is already in payment” and it is “not giving up on getting all of it”.67 However, the NAO reported that no payment was made against around four-fifths (79%) of this debt in September 2021. It concluded that, unless the Department writes off more of the debt, outstanding arrears will grow to £1 billion by March 2031 at current rates, and indefinitely 59 Written evidence CMS0007, anonymised; Written Evidence CMS0040, anonymised; Written evidence CMS 0030, anonymised 60 C&AG’s Report, para 23.2.23 61 Q 79 62 Q 79 63 Q 80, 82; C&AG’s Report, para 2.3, 2.24 64 C&AG’s Report, paras 15, 1.16 65 CMS 0042 66 C&AG’s Report, paras 25, 2.29 67 Qq 85–86 and 88 Child Maintenance 21 thereafter.68 The Department told us it expected investment in transforming its services to give it 15% more capacity to focus on compliance. However, even if compliance rates improve the Department will only delay the date the level of unpaid maintenance reaches £1 billion to 2033–34.69 The Department also told us that it expected only a minority of debt to fall into a category it described as “at the moment, we can’t see how the parent can pay and we’re just keeping a watching brief.” However, the Department does not currently have legal authority to write off uncollectable CMS arrears and has yet to decide how to treat cases which it has identified where the money owed is ‘potentially uncollectable’ because it has exhausted its enforcement options.70 Fraud and error in maintenance payments
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Government response AI summary
The department will continue to complete extensive operational insight and analysis to better understand how customers progress and inform a more efficient design. It is also reviewing legal processes and dependencies on third parties, with an implementation approach by Summer 2023, and drafting regulations to …
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HM Treasury
36
Conclusion
Ninth Report - Child Maintenance
Accepted
The Department told us that its Transformation programme should reduce costs and improve payment compliance by digitalising processes and allowing its staff to move from case maintenance into enforcement activities.83 It expected CMS transformation to be complete by financial year 2024–25, at a cost of more than £30 million to …
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The Department told us that its Transformation programme should reduce costs and improve payment compliance by digitalising processes and allowing its staff to move from case maintenance into enforcement activities.83 It expected CMS transformation to be complete by financial year 2024–25, at a cost of more than £30 million to save an estimated £151 million.84 The Department told us that it also planned to make wider improvements to its customer service through its transformation programme. The Department accepted that over the last two years, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, its service “has not been where we have wanted it to be.” However, it told us that its services are “certainly 77 C&AG’s Report, para 2.8; HM Treasury, Managing Public Money, para A.4.9.2, May 2021 78 Q 58 79 Qq 34 and 54 80 Qq 56 and 58 81 C&AG’s report, paras 3.2–3.3 82 Q 117; C&AG’s Report, para 3.4 83 Qq 117 and 122 84 Q97; C&AG’s Report, para 3.13 Child Maintenance 23 back on track” and that they were “without a doubt” going to get better.85 The Department told us that was seeking to “modernise the service, bringing far more digital services to customers that are easy to access and allow them to do some of the simpler things themselves” and “to capture better data, which will allow us to take different treatment solutions to different behaviour, rather than the one-size-fits-all approach.”86 However, it recognised “that not everyone has the bandwidth, the ability or the access” to use online services and provided reassurances that its telephone channel will always still available.87 85 Qq 120 and 121 86 Qq 97 and 98 87 Q119 24 Child Maintenance
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Government response AI summary
The government agrees with the committee's observation, confirming its commitment to continually improving customer service through its Transformation Programme which has already streamlined processes and launched new digital services, with further improvements planned by 2024.
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HM Treasury